


The Red Room (Sequel to Avengers: The Return of Loki)

by RavenWillowDragomir



Series: Avengers [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action, Action/Adventure, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Everyone whump, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Natasha Whump, Protective Clint Barton
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2018-04-01 03:09:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 41,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4003549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavenWillowDragomir/pseuds/RavenWillowDragomir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Avengers: The Return of Loki, Natasha and Clint return to Stark Towers with some disturbing news. Hydra has not been eliminated as they once though, and enemies from Natasha's past are after them. How do you hide when you don't know who to trust?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter has mentions of past rape/non-con. Nothing more graphic then the word 'rape' spoken. 
> 
> Please read and review! Comments are always appreciated.

It was dinner time in Avengers Tower, and that meant the mouth-watering smells of Clint's cooking and good hearted bickering. At least that is how it normally was. This night, however, was quiet. No one ate, but instead all eyes were turned to Natasha. Stark broke the silence.

"What?" He said incredulously, wrapping an arm around Pepper's shoulders as if they were going to target her. The spy rolled her eyes and took a drink from the bottle of rather expensive tequila she held. Normally Tony complained about her tendency to drink him dry. Tonight he didn't.

The two spies looked banged up. Agent Romanoff had a nasty looking gash over her eyebrow, and the right side of Barton's face was scraped as if it had been ground into the concrete.

"The Red Room." She repeated. "After everything from SHIELD was leaked onto the internet, my cover was blown.We’ve been over this." Steve rubbed his face. He was sitting between Sam and Clint on one side of the table. Tony sat between Bruce and Pepper at the other side, and Natasha had one end while Thor took the other.

"Bucky?" He stared at her. "You were in the same program as Bucky?" She took another drink.

"Years later, yes. They were working on reprogramming DNA by my time, though. I was just one of hundreds of infants genetically modified and trained to be perfect assassins." This was the most information any of them had ever been given about her past, other than Clint, who knew more than anyone. She didn't like it--knowledge was power and she didn't want anyone to have power over her. But they deserved to know why they were in danger.

"Hundreds? What happened to all of them?" Steve watched her drink with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"In the final stages they had us fight to the death. They wanted to weed out the weak ones--they threw off the experiments. The men were a disaster-the scientists tried to give them extra testosterone for muscle growth, but it backfired and the test subjects gave in to their more...primal instincts." She stared at the bottle. "Killed a lot of the girls before the scientists terminated them." Falcon looked like he wanted to throw up. Banner spoke up.

“So that’s where you got all your superpowers." She raised an eyebrow at him. "The super strength, seduction, high pain tolerance and fast healing are all traits of yours I've observed. I could never figure out how you could be human, but by all definitions of the word, you aren't. Your DNA has been manipulated,” Bruce said, sounding intrigued. She shook her head.

“Some of it has to do the modifications, a lot of it was from training.”

"Even if you fought to the death, they would want more than just one of you to survive, wouldn't they?" Steve asked.

"You're right. In the end there were twenty five of us."

"What happened to them?" Pepper questioned. The spy took another drink and paused.

"One by one they went crazy. A lot of them were free by that time." Clint pinched the bridge of his nose as she continued. "I killed them. All of them," she added, answering Tony's unspoken question.

"If they went crazy..." She snorted and shifted in her chair, wincing. Broken ribs, most likely.

“Don’t worry, you’re safe. If I go crazy, which I probably won’t, Clint is authorized to take me out by any means necessary.” Bruce was watching her warily.

“I think I should check you out.” She looked at him.

“Both of you,” he clarified. “For injuries.” She pointed a finger almost accusingly at her partner.

“He got shot in his leg. Do your medical thing to him.” The archer scowled at her from across the table.

“She’s got three broken ribs,” he whined. “Make her.” The doctor rolled his eyes.

“How about I make both of you. God, it’s like you’re turning each other in.” He stood and grabbed her arm firmly, jerking his head at Clint. “Come on you two.” The other man stood reluctantly.

“The last time someone said that to us there were men with guns shoving us towards a shallow grave,” Clint muttered.

“Needless to say that grave got filled,” Natasha finished darkly.

 

Banner dragged the two of them into the infirmary, with the others tagging along behind. He made them sit on the edge of a cot as he examined Hawkeye’s messily bandaged shin. Tony, Pepper, Steve, Sam and Thor stood in various positions with their arms crossed.

“And remind me why they’re coming after us?”

“The Red Room, also affiliated with Hydra, wants us for several reasons. I’m one of their last living early human experiments. Bucky’s presumably on the run from them or they would sent him. We’re also what’s standing in the way of total world domination, not to mention Steve, Sam and I killed a lot of their operatives.”

“The guys they sent after us were half functional, at best. They had metal arms and human bodies, but something was wrong with them. I don’t know if they were flawed, or diseased or what. That’s a reason why they would want Nat. They want to study her and know what they did right with her,” Hawkeye said as the doctor bandaged him up. A slight shiver ran down her spine at the thought of more experimentation. Only her partner noticed. “Another reason is they want to use her again.”

“How could they do that?” Steve looked confused.

“A combination of brainwashing by means of electrical shock and physical, mental and psychological torture,” he spoke for her, as she wasn’t making eye contact with anyone as Bruce prodded gently at her ribcage. “It’s also possible though not probable that the guys were sent not from Hydra but from Russia, in which case it’s pretty obvious why they’d want Nat,” Hawkeye said. “Hydra made her kill a lot of people and the country wants payback. We don’t think that’s very a likely option because she’s an Avenger, and we’re currently known as the people protecting the world.”

“What he’s saying is that it’s possible they’re not after you at all, and me being here is compromising your safety. I should be at my apartment not getting you guys killed.”

"No way," Tony said firmly.

"We're not safe here, either way. They know exactly where we are." Clint said. "You don't happen to have a Stark safe house in Russia?"

"I thought the bad guys are in Russia."

"Hiding right under their noses..." Natasha said slowly. "That could work." She glared at Bruce as he unzipped her suit and bandaged her ribs tightly.

"Of course I do. I'll get the jet prepped."

"No, they'll be monitoring air traffic in and out of the tower. If we do this, we’re going to have to do this our way."

"Your way?"

"Like spies."

                                                                                                         *

The airport was crowded on a Saturday, so in their civilian clothing and hooded faces the Avengers blended. They each were catching different flights to Russia so as not to draw attention to their suspiciously familiar looking group. Natasha had constructed complex backstories for each of them that spanned from their names to the cities they were born in. Their tiny earpiece communication devices went past the airport security, but weapons didn't. Thor hid his hammer, knowing when they touched down he could summon it from across the world. The rest of them would have to make do with Stark's backup stash of weapons. Steve, Clint, and Natasha's flights were A gates, on the left wing of the massive airport, while Tony, Thor, Bruce and Sam were in the B wing. In one ear they had their private and secure communication line, the other a Bluetooth or an earbud so if seen talking to themselves, it would be assumed they were on the phone. Steve was ahead of Natasha near gate 82A, leaning against a wall with a hoodie and baseball cap and looking bored. His flight didn't take off for another two hours, so he was settled in with a bag of potato chips and keeping an eye out for Hydra operatives. Clint trailed along with sunglasses and a hoodie, watching Natasha's blue hood several paces ahead of him. Unlike many of their missions, there hadn’t been time to locate escape routes and tap into security cameras. By the time they left Stark towers that morning, a dark van was already casing the joint.

A man in a black suit grabbed Natasha's forearm and spun her around so fast the hood fell off. He saw her eyes widen in shock and Clint started pushing through the people between them. The hallway was too packed to break into a run.

"I'd recognize that body anywhere." He heard the man say through Natasha's com. Her face contorted with rage, screwing up her beautiful features into something much darker. "You always were my favourite, Red," he purred, flashing a set of perfectly white teeth. Natasha lost it. Her hands flew to his throat and he went down, people screaming and giving the two a wide berth. He had never seen her fight like this. She knew how to kill people and she could be vicious when doing it, but what she was doing now was downright animalistic. The guy managed to get a shot into her before she tore his gun away. Instead of ending him instantly like she normally would have, she shot him in the shoulder, then broke his arm,  dislocated his other shoulder and elbow before setting in hitting his face, over and over and over.

"Tasha!" He grabbed her around the waist and tried to pull her off, but she clung to the barely conscious man. Suddenly she whipped out a knife (how did she get that past the metal detectors?) and buried it hilt deep in his groin. A high pitched scream was ripped from his lungs and Clint finally managed to pull his partner off him.

"I need backup here!" Steve appeared over his shoulder, having heard the attacker through his earpiece and only now managed to push through the crowd. Natasha was still trying to get at the mysterious man, who was howling as blood pooled on the floor.

"What the hell?" Clint handed him a bleeding and furious Black Widow, and it took all the soldier's strength to hold her, kicking and screaming. The archer picked up the fallen gun and shot the attacker through his skull, killing him instantly. He wasn't going to leave any loose ends. More screams came from the onlookers, but he ignored them.

"Stark, we're compromised, no telling how many guys they've got in here. Tasha's hit, I can't tell where. We need out, now."

"Shit. Go into the nearest women's public bathroom on your left, barricade the door and we'll blast through the wall from the outside. I told you this wouldn't work." He and Steve quickly moved off, carting Black Widow with them. Everyone had cleared out of the bathroom to watch the fight, so they had no trouble slamming and locking the door behind them. The screams from outside were muffled now.

"Hold her still." Steve pulled her closer, her back against his chest and her feet not quite touching the ground. Clint came around to face her. "Tasha, Tasha, listen to me. Hey!" Steve flinched as he slapped her across the face, hard. She went limp and her gaze finally met his.

"Clint."

"Yes."

"Is he dead?"

"Yes. He's dead." Steve let her go and she fell into her partner's embrace.

“I killed him.”

“No, Nat, you didn’t kill him, I killed him.” he looked confused now. She sunk to her knees on the tile floor.

“No, I mean I killed him back in Russia.”

“What?”

“When I was 12...I reached the training stage for killing and I refused..they sent him in, to...and he kept...until I snapped and killed him…” She seemed to have forgotten the com link was on, or she was just too out of it to care. “They needed me to kill so they...he was dead, Clint. I snapped his neck. He was dead.” The wall behind them exploded but she didn’t so much as blink. Clint picked her up carefully and followed Steve into the open Quinjet that waited. The minute he was inside the hatch closed and they flew off at full speed, disappearing into the clouds.

“Jarvis, I want to know if anyone tries to track us, and I want you to lose them if they do.”

“Yes sir,” the cool voice replied. Clint laid Natasha on the floor and unzipped her jacket. The bullet had hit her right side where her liver was, leaving a growing stain on her tee shirt.

“Always getting shot,” Bruce muttered, kneeling down next to her. The good thing was that there was an exit wound, so the bullet wasn’t still inside her. “You guys realize I’m predominantly a scientist, not a doctor, right?” Steve ripped open two gauze packets with his teeth and handed them to Bruce, who applied one to each side of the wound and pressed firmly. Clint handed him a needle from the med kit and he swiftly injected it into Natasha’s neck. Her eyelids fluttered shut and her muscles relaxed as the sedative took effect. It was a large injection, enough to knock out Thor, but her genetic modifications gave her a resilience to medicines and tranquilizers.

“Who the hell was he?” Tony sat on one of the benches next to Sam and Thor. Clint, Bruce and Steve sat down on the floor around the spie’s unconscious body.

“I’m not sure who. At least we know now that it’s Hydra that’s after us and not the Russians.”

“How do we know this?”

“The guy, I think it might have been Michael Kozlovsky, he was from the Red Room. That’s what the guys called her there, Red.”

“I thought she said that they killed all the males because something went wrong?” Steve rested his back against the side of the jet.

“That was the male assassins. These guys were genetically modified in different ways to train the women.”

“Train?”

“Torture, rape, starve, pretty much anything to prepare them for the possible outcomes of their missions. The scientists needed grunts to do their dirty work, shoot them up with sedatives to perform tests and shit.” Hawkeye looked angry, angrier than any of them had ever seen him.

“What?” Steve gaped.

“Don’t worry, your precious Bucky had it somewhat better than them. Probably even got to partake,” he snarled. The captain raised his hands in a ‘whoa, dude, sorry’ sort of way.

“That’s not what I meant. That’s just…”

“Unforgivable,” Thor finished.

“So if they weren’t modified and trained to be assassins then why would they send them to round us up? You’d think they’d send someone more qualified, unless they’re complete morons.”

“Probably thought she’d be travelling alone. She never worked with a partner and they trained her not to trust anyone, so they’d assume that she doesn’t really trust any of us. That and the fear factor of seeing Michael again would be enough to get the jump on her, at least enough to sedate her or disable her. Must have forgotten that when Nat gets scared she gets angry.”

“Who is this Michael anyway? How do you know him?”

“Forget it.”

“He’s one of the guys after Natasha and us, it’s our right to know.” Clint swabbed some of the man’s blood from his partner’s knuckles and put it in a bag. He would run tests to determine if his suspicions were correct.

“He was one of the guys after her. And he’s dead now.”

“It still matters,” Steve insisted.

“If you want to ask Natasha intimate details about just who it was and how they tortured her, be my guest,” he hissed. “There are things you tell your best friend and your partner that under no circumstances are to be repeated. I’d rather die than betray her trust.”

                                                                                                      *

“Nngghh.” Natasha opened one eye. She was lying on a soft surface, and blurry faces were starting to come into view, starting with Clint. “Where are we?”

“We’re in Sam’s old apartment. Figured we’d be safer here until we figure out a plan of attack.” She nodded.It made sense. Natasha was lying on the large bed in the now bare bedroom that had belonged to Sam. The others were sitting in chairs brought in from the dining room table, listening to music or playing on their various electronic devices. They turned them off when she woke and Clint propped her pillow against the headboard so she could sit up.

“Sorry for screwing up the plan.” Tony shrugged.

“Our wing of the airport was crawling with them, someone would have recognized us eventually whether or not you decided to kick the shit out of that guy. It was only a matter of time.”

“Speaking of that guy, Clint got samples of his blood, I was wondering if you’d mind if I took a look at them?” Bruce pushed his glasses up his nose. “For scientific purposes.”

“They weren’t the modified soldiers or assassins,” she started, but he cut her off.

“I know, I know, but they were still genetically modified. I just want to know the modifications.”

“You don’t.”

“What?” His face clouded with confusion.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Natasha, I’m a scientist,” he said softly. “Of course I want to know. The more I know the more we have to use against these guys.” She rolled her eyes and put a hand to the side of her head as if it would alleviate her throbbing headache.

“Clint, would you,” she gestured vaguely at Banner and squeezed her eyes closed. The overhead lights were a little too bright, the voices a little too loud. She always had a headache after being sedated, but this one was particularly bad. All she wanted to do was curl back up on the mattress and fall back asleep, so she sank back under the blankets.

“You can study the sample if you want but it’s not going to get you far, Doctor. These guys were only genetically modified to be relatively smart and then the scientists tampered with their reproductive cells.”

“Tampered?”

“I don’t really know the details.” The other men were pretending not to hear, but he knew they were listening. Natasha’s breathing had evened out, thankfully. He didn’t think he could keep explaining with her beautiful green eyes watching him calmly. “I think size, stamina, etcetera...”

“If they made Natasha and the other girls sterile then why would they tamper at all? They eliminated the possibility of them getting pregnant when they removed her ovaries.”

“Natasha can’t have kids? How are you two going...” Steve asked, a hint of sadness in his voice. Clint rolled his eyes.

“They’re considered a liability, a distraction. Plus it’d be pretty damn hard for her to fight while pregnant, Steve. And Bruce, it’s bad if you have to carry a kid, but it doesn’t matter if you get someone else pregnant. These guys were there of their own accord, the bastards didn’t mind knocking up a few civilians. And when those children were born, they were taken away and went right into the program. A steady stream of test subjects,” he spat.

“Is that how she got there? Someone raped her mother and stole her when she was born?” Steve couldn’t stay out of the conversation, and the others were no longer pretending to be busy doing other things.

“Her history is...complicated.”

“Cut the crap, Clint. There are about a hundred guys surrounding Stark Towers, that airport was bombed after we left, killing innocent people. So I don’t really give a shit about covers and lies right now, I want the truth,” Steve had to restrain himself from yelling, lest he wake Natasha. Clint sighed and glanced at his partner. As long as he didn’t go into too much detail, and left the important parts out, she wouldn’t kick his ass. He wasn’t so sure about the others, but they had brought it on themselves.

“The short story is that her parents were killed in a fire by her uncle who worked with the KGB. They brainwashed her and trained her in martial arts, sniping, tons of other forms of combat that’d take too long to name. They gave her false memories, and when she worked out they were fake they’d just torture her and start all over again. She said her first mission she was 13, she worked for them until she was 17 at which point she killed a SHIELD agent and I was sent to kill her. I decided not to, she defected to SHIELD, we became partners. We worked a bunch of cases and rose up to become top level SHIELD agents. Under Fury and Maria, she’s the highest ranking agent there is, followed by me. She was kidnapped and tortured so badly that she returned to the KGB and it took me six months to infiltrate. They tortured her that whole time. I got her out, barely, and we returned. Even with her fast healing it took three months for her to heal after what they did to her. Than other girls from her program started going crazy, shooting up public places or killing themselves, and we were sent to kill them. The last one we killed in Budapest, where we were locked in a full out war with KGB soldiers. We got out, she took me to a hospital. Then the Russians put a bounty on her head and snipers took her out, she was shot six times. After that Fury thought we’d be safest with the Avengers, a plan that had been circulating for a while, and Nat was sent into your operation,” he nodded to Stark. “I was still hospitalized from Budapest, ‘cause I don’t have any genetic superpowers.” They stared blankly at him.

“Holy shit,” Sam commented.

“How many times has she been shot?” Tony questioned.

“Well she was shot those six, and Bucky shot her twice,” Steve started to count in his head.

“The Winter Soldier shot her seven times.”

“What?”

“You haven’t noticed she shares some of his moves? He was one of the guys that trained the girls, a ‘specialist’ they called him. He shot her five times there, once to kill the scientist she was protecting, and then again during the whole Hydra incident.”

“I understand why she has trust issues now,” Thor muttered, examining his hammer.

“You happy now, Steve? Satisfied?” Clint couldn’t keep a hint of anger from his voice. Tensions were running high the longer they sat holed up in the dingy apartment.

“Not exactly the word I’d use,” he replied diplomatically. “But you have to admit that it’s easier for us to understand when we know the whole story.” Hawkeye just snorted. “That was the full story, wasn’t it?”

“Excluding a few unimportant or personal facts, yeah. You don’t need to know everything about a guy in order to kill him.”

“I think you do.”

“We don’t even know if the same guys are running the KGB, and even if they were, Nat never told me names. I think it’s fair to assume that if they’re shooting at us, they’re bad guys.” They all agreed to that, and things settled down a bit.

It wasn’t until a few hours later that Natasha woke up again, bolting upright with sweat glistening above her brow and her chest heaving.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Clint said quietly, drawing her attention. “You’re okay.” He squeezed her arm comfortingly and she swiped a hand across her face, her gaze taking in the room, the exits, the people.

“So what’s the plan?”

 

*****


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this one took so long. Comment if you like. Please Read and Review!

CHAPTER 2

Natasha got out of bed. That in itself was a hard task. Not because of the pain, but because there were five men in the room telling her not to move and offering to bring her anything she needed. Clint remained silent, knowing their efforts were futile.

“Shut up.” She groaned, poking her head out of the doorway to scan the kitchen. No coffee machine. Nothing.

“Clint?”

“I know, I’m sorry,” he cringed. “I’ve been trying to work out how to get it without being seen for the past hour.”

“What’s going on?” The guys were utterly confused.

“Coffee.”

“What?”

“She needs coffee.” Tony stared at her.

“You need coffee?” Her glare told him she wasn’t messing around.

“Yes, Stark. If Clint and I are going to get us out of this country in one piece, I need some damn coffee.”

“You get us out of the country? You just got shot! We can work out a plan, we’re not  that stupid you know.”

“Are you a spy?”

“What?”

“Are you a spy.” She enunciated every word clearly.

“No.”

“Then shut the hell up.” He blinked and she started pacing back and forth, one hand tenderly exploring her abdomen to discover how well she was going to be able to work.

“I can get her coffee,” Sam offered. “I’m the least famous. Slap on a hoodie, a pair of earphones and some sunglasses and no one will recognize me.

“You’ve been all over the television. With wings.”

“Yeah, and you guys are all over everywhere.”

“I have an idea.” Clint frowned slightly. “We need to create a tunnel from here to Stark Towers. That way we can get supplies.”

“How do you propose we make this tunnel?” Bruce inquired, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“Nat?” She nodded.

“Yeah. That would work.”

“You guys really need to stop having mental conversations,” Tony said, annoyed. “Speak. What are you planning?”

“Steve, do you remember the SHIELD plasma cutter that Maria used to escape that truck when they were going to kill us?”

“Yes?”

“I’ve got one of those somewhere.”

“Well somewhere isn’t really going to help us, Romanoff,” he said, crossing his arms. “Where exactly is it?” She ran a hand through her hair.

"In one of my apartments." She chewed her lip. It was wishful thinking that they wouldn't discover her heavily guarded safe houses, but it was highly unlikely they had covered all of them.

"Which one?"

"Long Island. Of course we've got more at the tower, but since we need one to get in..."

"I'll go," Steve volunteered.

"Wait a minute grandpa," Tony stopped him. "You're Captain America. You don't blend."

"And you do?" Tony opened his mouth to retort but Natasha cut him off.

"I'm going, you're staying, end of story." She pulled her jacket off the hook. Someone had washed the blood off but there was still a hole through and through.

"Romanoff, are you insane? You're pretty recognizable and not JUST Hydra is after YOU."

"I'll be right back. You won't even know I'm gone." Before anyone else could argue she slipped through the doorway and they heard the front door slam. Clint rested his elbow on his knees.

"Is she going to be okay?" Steve asked.

"She can take care of herself," Clint said tiredly. "Battling monsters is your specialty, this is hers."

"She didn't seem in control when Michael grabbed her," Bruce reasoned.

"You try reuniting with a guy that tortured you for 17 years and see how it goes for you," Barton snapped.

"Calm down," Thor boomed, as always drowning out any other voices. "Times of war are difficult for us all, but we are only as strong as we are united."

"When did you read Harry Potter?" Stark said snarkily.

"Tony..."

"It was a joke. I know, I know. Strength in numbers etcetera. Got it." Hawkeye stood suddenly and started pacing.

"Barton?"

"If you were a wanted criminal with people looking for you, how would you travel?"

"I would try to go out in the open where no one would expect me."

"Tried that. They were one step ahead of us. Didn't think we'd be there with Nat, but they still got there before us."

"So the better question is, what is the most un-Natsha-ish thing we could do."

"Ask for help?"

"We don't know anyone that could help us. Fury and Maria are out of the country."

"There's Pepper."

"She's already out of the U.S. Hiding somewhere."

"Great." Clint sat back down on the edge of the bed. "Just..great."

                           *

Natasha reached Long Island easily and made her way to an apartment complex. She found the manager dead in his office. He had been shot in the head with what looked like a .9 mm. She quickly picked the lock on the safe and withdrew the gun and ammo she had stashed there a few months earlier. After checking to make sure it was loaded, she crept up the staircase. The door to her apartment had been kicked in, the wooden doorframe splintered. Natasha stepped carefully inside. She put a bullet in the head of the first intruder she saw and whipped around just in time to duck a blow from the man waiting behind the door. She shot at him too, but her aim was thrown askew as a third tackled her and knocked the gun from her hand. They slid across the floorboards for several feet before she sprung up and slammed her foot towards him. He rolled out of the way and stood as well, but she jumped up and wrapped her thighs around his neck, bringing him crashing back to the ground. His hands fought her legs as his face turned red but she gripped his head firmly and twisted. With a sharp ‘snap’ he lay still. The third attacker raised his own firearm and sent a bullet towards her shoulder, but she dropped to the floor and rolled to avoid it.

Black Widow kicked the gun from the third man’s hand and sent him flying backwards into the wall with a roundhouse kick to his chest. She grabbed his neck and slammed her knee into his groin, causing his legs to buckle and a cry of pain to escape his lips. Before she had the chance to finish him off a knife slashed across her back and she turned to see yet another well dressed man. He must have hidden in the neighbouring apartment and heard the noise. Before he could use the weapon again she sent a whirlwind of punches at him. Some he blocked, some he didn’t. A well placed kick broke his jaw, which lowered his defenses enough to break his nose and bring him to his knees with another groin kick. She grabbed his head and flipped over him, pulling him to lay spreadeagled on the floor while also putting her within reach of her gun. She picked it up and shot both of them through the skull before doing the same to the man whose neck she had broke. She wasn’t taking any chances.

Natasha made her way into the bedroom and opened the safe, withdrawing three more guns, more bullets, a few knives, the laser cutter, gun holsters and a black backpack. She wanted to bring the spare bow for Hawkeye, but it was too large to fit. After stuffing everything into the backpack she changed into a completely new outfit, putting the old ones in a trashcan and lighting them on fire. The gash on her back was bleeding heavily, but she couldn’t stitch it herself so it would have to wait. Hopefully it wouldn’t take her so long that it would bleed through her shirt and sweatshirt before she got back to the guys. Natasha twisted her hair into a bun and hid it under a wavy blonde wig and her hood. The backpack she lifted onto her shoulders before moving into the living room, moving carefully in case there was another attacker. She searched through the men’s pockets and took all of their stuff, wallets, guns, knives. She would go through it later with the others. She did take the time to make herself a quick cup of instant coffee. It was horrible, but it would have to do. She chugged the coffee and cleaned it. She didn’t want her saliva on the rim. She didn’t have to worry about fingerprints, as hers had been burned off, but her blood was on the floor. She cleaned that up and added the towel to the trashcan fire. When she was sure there was no usable evidence left, she exited out the fire escape.

                                                           *

The sound of the door opening jolted them all from their sleep. Natasha entered the bedroom and dumped the backpack’s contents onto the bed, lowering her hood and pulling the wig off.

“Wallets?”

“There were four of them, they broke in. Killed the manager.”

“Nat, you’re bleeding,” Hawkeye commented as she removed the sweatshirt.

“Flesh wound.” He helped her pull the shirt up.

“Not a flesh wound.” He marched into the bathroom and returned with the medkit, which he opened. As Hawkeye pressed a bandage to her back to stem the bleeding, the Avengers examined the loot.

“You have eight guns in all of your safehouses?” Steve asked incredulously.

“Four are from Hydra. But the other four, yeah. It’s safer that way. The whole point of a safe house is somewhere you can hang low and get supplies.” She nodded to the guns.

“I couldn’t fit the bow in,” she added. He sterilized her wound and his hands, put on a pair of gloves and pulled out a needle and thread.

“It’s okay, I didn’t think you’d be able to fit it inconspicuously.” He pinched one end of the wound closed and carefully pulled the needle through the skin. Natasha picked up the closest wallet and flipped it open.

“Jim Hendrick,” she snorted, tossing the fake ID onto the bed.

“Stop flexing.”

“I’m not.”

“Stop moving.” She rolled her eyes and released the wallet. Steve sat down on the bed and picked it up.

“Take the cash,” she instructed, watching him pull out and examine the credit cards. The captain did and picked up the next wallet.

“Adam Levi. You’d think they’d choose normal names.” He removed a wad of cash from that wallet as well.

“They’re boasting,” Clint said, still carefully stitching the wound. They didn’t have enough pain medication to waste on non fatal wounds, and Natasha wouldn’t accept it even if he tried. She said it made her fuzzy, and fuzzy made people dead. The others joined them around the bed and Tony snatched up the third wallet.

“Ron Weasnick.” He shook his head. “So we don’t know their real names, do we?” They all looked at Natasha, who shrugged.

“Didn’t recognize them. Probably new guys, Hydra operatives tend to have a short life span.”

“I thought you were enhanced to live longer?”

“You reach a point where your usefulness has run out, a target gets the better of you, or the torture becomes too much for your body to take and you spiral downwards. I’m alive because Clint got me out.”

“Kind of like terminal patients, the more times they have to be resuscitated with the paddles the more they deteriorate.”

“A lot like that. Electric shock was a big part of the way the Red Room tortured them.” Hawkeye finished his stitches and pasted a bandage over the wound before pulling the back of her shirt down.

“Did you come up with any ideas while I was gone or did you just nap?”

“I’ve figured out a way to get all the way to Stark towers underground,” Tony said, picking up the cutter and examining it. “We’ll end up in the bottom level, but I’ve programed Jarvis not to sound any alarms.” The billionaire had visited the Quinjet cloaked by an abandoned warehouse a few miles away to communicate with his computer systems and discover precisely how he was going to get to the tower. “The sooner we go the better. The hole should start about there,” he pointed to the floor near the bathroom door. “Once we get to the tower I can send a robot in to seal the passageway so no one else can get in.”

Natasha strapped her holsters to her thighs and put a fully loaded gun in each one before handing Clint and Sam one each. Steve and Bruce weren’t particularly gun crazy, so she packed the rest of the supplies into the bag and handed it to her partner. He slung it over his shoulder and they all turned to watch Tony begin the first cuts.

It didn’t take them long to travel through the tunnel and up into the bottom level of Stark Towers. Once they had all piled into the main room, which was just another of Tony’s many design labs, they turned to examine the dark hole by their feet.

“I’ll get a robot,” Tony said.

“Let me check the levels first,” Natasha countered.

“Jarvis would have set off alarms if the tower had been infiltrated.”

“Jarvis has been tampered with before. Plus, you set the security to allow us to tunnel in. If anyone had gotten wind of that conversation they could have come in the same way we did.”

“You’re paranoid, you know that?”

“It’s what’s kept me alive so long.” She moved towards the elevator. “I’ll send one down when we clear sublevel 3. Just wait until we get back.” She pressed the button and stepped inside, followed shortly by her partner. Before anyone had a chance to argue the doors slid shut.

“You okay?”

“Yes.” She pulled out her guns as the elevator slid into place and the doors opened. Sublevel 4 was another tech lab, though this was focused around information and not design. It didn’t take the two of them long to clear the floor. They worked fast and efficiently, opening every door, checking every closet. When they reached sublevel three, the pair found Stark’s massive collection of robots, some moving, others inactive. Natasha moved over to the nearest control console and quickly typed in a few commands. The nearest robot came to life and disappeared inside the elevator. Clint shivered slightly as it walked past. He had never been one for robots, finding that he was always more tense around them than around humans. Perhaps Ultron had made a bad impression on him, or maybe he didn’t like the idea of strength without a brain to guide it.

Even though the building was massive, it took only a little over an hour for them to clear the entire place. They all ended up sitting around the dining room table, just as they had a few days previously.

“So what are we going to do?” Steve asked the obvious question on everyone’s mind.

“I say we go after them,” Stark said.

“We don’t have enough firepower.”

“Are you kidding? We’ve taken down entire armies before.”

“This is different, Stark,” Clint said patiently, as if he was explaining it to a small child. “This isn’t a mindless mob of barely trained people with guns.”

“He’s right. Bucky nearly killed me, and he was just one guy,” Steve added. “Maybe the newer copies aren’t good, but if they’re even half as functional as he is we’d have trouble.”

“So we blow the place up.”

“We don’t know where their headquarters are,” Natasha said, not looking up from the laptop she was typing away furiously on. “I’ve been trying to find it.”

“What about where they used to run their operation out of? When you were one of their operatives.”

“They’ve moved. After I dug Nat out for the second time and I recovered from Budapest I went back there with a few other operatives. Place was deserted, no clues or signs of where they went.”

“So we capture one and get them to talk,” Steve reasoned. Natasha snorted. “What? You have something to say, Romanoff?”

“You’re against torture?” It was more of a statement then a question.

“Yes.”

“You’re not going to get them to talk.” She still didn’t take her eyes off the screen.

“We have to at least try, Natasha. Sometimes they talk just from fear. Or because they want to do the right thing.” She finally met his gaze.

“Can you imagine how much torture it would take to make your best friend, boyfriend and soldier try and kill you, Rogers? To make him torture and kill dozens of people?” He set his jaw.

“You defected. You talked.”

“I wasn’t captured.”

“I thought you were Barton’s target?”

“I was. But I wasn’t captured. I could have hurt him. I wasn’t immobilized. Every KGB operative has been strapped down and tortured so badly that they know death at the hands of a captor would be better then what Hydra would do to them if they talked. I told him to shoot me, he didn’t. I went with him because he was SHIELD, and I knew I could be protected there. I could work for the good guys. You think we can offer protection? We can’t even cover our own asses, no spy in their right minds would give us information.”

“What are you suggesting we do, Romanoff?” Steve was clearly getting frustrated, though it was partially because she wound him up about Bucky.

**“I say I let them take me.”**


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

“Are you insane?” Natasha raised an eyebrow at Steve’s exclamation.

“No. Are you?”

“You want to let them capture you. Do you have a death wish?”

“No. But I don’t see a way into this facility without knowing where it is first.”

“...And you want to plant a tracker on your person and have them lead us right to the source,” Steve finished. Hawkeye paled.

“Nat, outside. Now.” She rolled her eyes and pushed out her chair, following him out onto the balcony. Considering their current predicament, it probably wasn’t wise for them to be outside, but it was Hawkeye’s favourite place.

“Please don’t tell me you’re actually considering this.”

“We don’t have a lot of options here, Clint.” She pursed her lips. “We can wait for them to track us down, surround us and capture all of us. Or I can lead us right to them.”

“They’ll destroy you.” She raised an eyebrow at him.

“It took months to turn me last time. It’s not going to take that long to trace a tracker and blow the whole thing up.”

“You know as much as I do how much they can hurt you in the hours it takes for us to get there.”

“I’m not afraid of pain, Clint,” she said soothingly. “They wouldn’t do anything that would permanently put me out of commission. They wouldn’t be able to use me if they did that.”

“I’m afraid,” he hissed, crossing his arms. It was cold with the wind blowing fiercely. She didn’t seem affected by it. “I’m afraid for you.” She stepped closer and rested a hand lightly on his shoulder.

“Clint,” her voice was softer now. He reluctantly met her eyes. “I can take care of myself. You know that. I’m pretty damn good at keeping myself alive.”

“After everything that happened last year..” he suddenly found tears, unbidden, welling in his eyes.

“None of that was your fault,” she said quickly.

“It doesn’t mean you weren’t hurt. Hell, Nat, you were dead. And on the brink of death. And so hurt I…”

“This is our job. We risk our lives to save people. You know the price we sometimes have to pay as well as I do. Pain is temporary.”

“Why does it have to be you? Why can’t one of us go? They’re looking for all of us, not just you.” She seemed to have expected this question.

“They’ll scan the captive for devices. They know I have metal screws in my leg. We can attach the tracker to one of those and they won’t be able to detect it. They don’t know anything about you. They’ll investigate any foreign object. They’ll cut you open if they have to.”

“I know.” She rested a hand on the side of his face and kissed him gently. She had to lean on her toes to do so.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said. He nodded and rested a hand on her waist, leaning down and pulling her into a stronger kiss than before. There was something hungry about the way her fingers ran through his hair, how his clenched her waist tightly. They broke apart only when her back hit the railing of the balcony and they had run out of air. They parted wordlessly and returned to the table. The others were staring at them with varying levels of surprise, though not much for what they had obviously just seen through the windows.

“I’m going,” Natasha said, folding her hands in her lap. The tone of voice she used showed that this decision was final. There would be no arguing with her unless someone wanted a blackened eye or a broken finger.

“Just one thing,” Clint said. Her head snapped around to look at him, one eyebrow arched in a way that said she was not amused. “I’m going with her.”

                                                          *

“No you’re not,” she said immediately.

“I think he should go,” Steve disagreed.

“What’s the point of risking two lives? Risk torture?”

“Two people on the inside is better than one. Two people to get past defenses. Two people to get each other out.” Natasha crossed her arms, which was becoming an increasingly popular posture among the Avengers.

“Two people needing rescuing instead of one. Two people possibly incapacitated. Two people in pain,” she countered, her voice sharp.

“Why does it have you be you who goes in?”

“Because I have a way to get a locator past their defenses, because I’m the one they want the most, because I’m the bloody spy,” she snarled. Tony narrowed his eyes at her.

“You don’t want us getting hurt,” he said slowly.

“Shut up Stark.”

“I’m serious. You’d rather risk yourself than one of us. You’d sacrifice your well being so that none of us had to. That’s why you’re so mad Barton wants to go with you.”

“He’s right,” Bruce said. “Clint, that’s understandable. He’s your...person.” There were a few eyebrows raised at that, but then again, they had been watching ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ lately. “But in order to not let us go, you must actually care.” Natasha’s mouth had formed a thin line. “Despite the snark and the distance, you really do care about us, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

“Or maybe it’s because I don’t know what you can handle and what you’ll say if you can’t,” she said, eyes flashing.

“We’ve all been hurt before.”

“You haven’t all been strapped to a table and tortured. A bullet isn’t pain. Broken bones, deflated lungs, burns, they’re nothing compared to what they could do to you.”

“Just admit that you care already,” Thor said, bored. “We do not have all the time in the world.”

“Sue me,” she said testily. Everyone smiled except for Clint, who was watching her intently.

“I’m still coming.”

“I just said--”

“You know I can handle it. It’s not debatable. I will go with you or you won’t go at all.”

“I agree.” Murmurs of assent ran around the table and she scowled.

“Let’s move.”

                                                                  *

It was only a few hours later that Natasha and Clint were laying side by side on the large balcony outside, looking up at the stars.

“That was a stupid thing you did there,” she muttered.

“Can you blame me for wanting to keep you safe?”

“You being at Hydra’s headquarters with me won’t make me any safer. It’ll just hurt you too.”

“Would you send me in alone?”

“Hell no.”

“Then you see my predicament.” Silence fell, and in those moments they simply laid together and watched the satellite move slowly across the heavens.

“You’re an idiot.”

“I’m not, actually,” he replied. “I’m not as smart as you. But compared to most people,” he waved his hand around. “I’m pretty intelligent.”

“You follow your heart instead of your head too much.” She moved closer to him, turning on her side and resting a hand on his chest. “I’ve seen a lot of people go that way.”

“And you follow your head instead of your heart, when you need to,” he said softly. “I’ve seen a lot of people go that way too.” She smiled as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and leaned against him.

“Maybe you could do to think with your mind more often.” She paused. “Maybe I could do to think with my heart more.” She pulled a face to show her displeasure at that idea.

“Maybe that’s why we’re perfect for each other.” She rolled her eyes at this.

“No one is perfect for another person. There are no such things as soul mates. That’s just for fairytales.” He shrugged.

“You love me.”

“Unfortunately,” she teased lightly.

“That’s good enough for me.” He settled in more comfortably, twirling a strand of her red hair absentmindedly between his fingers.

“How do you like my hair this length?” She asked softly. It was her natural curly hair but longer than before, the tips beyond her collarbone.

“It’s my favourite,” he replied. She often did this, before they left for a dangerous mission. The day of she was all business. But in the few moments beforehand, she would lightly ask how he liked her new lipstick, or when he had gotten that haircut. It was a distraction method. He didn’t mind.

They remained that way for at least an hour, occasionally speaking to each other or kissing, but mostly just staring into space. When it had gotten late enough that they’d be unwise not to get some rest, they made a fast retreat to Natasha’s room. She curled up on her bed and he lay down next to her, wrapping an arm around her waist. They fell asleep quickly after she’d taken a dose of her sleeping medication, and although their dreams were not too pleasant, they both slept through the night.

                                                          

                                                                *

The next morning the Avengers congregated in the livingroom. Natasha and Clint were both dressed in disguise, though anyone inspecting them closely would be able to tell who they were. They carried their usual weapons, as Hydra would find it odd that they were without them, but neither carried their best. They might not be getting their things back.

“I’m still against this,” were the first words out of Steve’s mouth.

“Good morning to you too,” Natasha said cooly, making a beeline for the coffee.

“Based on the titanium in the screws in your femur, Tony and I have created a tracking chip that should be undetectable.” The two scientists looked exhausted. “The, uh, problem is implanting it without leaving a mark. If they see a fresh wound they’ll know we’ve tampered with it. Even with our modern implantation, it leaves a tiny puncture wound and a bruise.” She thought hard, concentrating.

“My hip.”

“You do have the same type of screws in your hip, but I’m assuming you mentioned the ones in your leg because you know any type of implantation around your hip will cause more pain than the leg will.”

“Do it anyway. Go in through the bullet wound.” Bruce sighed. As a doctor, it seemed inhumane. In their current predicament, it was necessary.

“Let’s eat something first,” Barton muttered, sitting heavily in his chair. He was not excited about the idea of injuring her further. They all sat and dug into their microwave pizza. They were running out of supplies.

“Depending on where they take you, it might take us over 24 hours to get there.”

“Yes,” Natasha said. They all watched as she drained an entire mug of coffee in one go.

“Do you have any ideas how we’re going to get you out?” Sam asked, leaning an elbow on the table. “The general ‘blow stuff up’ attitude isn’t going to work while you two are inside.”

“Cause a distraction. They’ll have to leave us unguarded. I know how to get out of their cells with a little time. Some of you come in while we’re moving out. Wilson, you should stay in the Quinjet.”

“Why me?”

“Because whoever’s in it needs to be able to fly the damn thing. They’ll undoubtedly send other aircrafts or missiles at you. Think you can handle that?” He gave an easy shrug, though she knew he was secretly pleased she thought he was a good pilot.

“So we’ll be making our way towards you,” Tony said, motioning to himself, Thor, Bruce and Steve.

“Maybe Banner shouldn’t…”

“You might need a doctor. You two both have bullet wounds going into this thing.”

“There’s not a lot he’d be able to do while we were fighting our way out to the Quinjet as fast as we could.”

“Then what am I going to do?”

“Take care of things outside.” Bruce bit his lip, looking unsure. He tried his best never to release the Hulk, but he had gained a lot more control over his beast side recently. Plus, it was urgent.

“Alright.”

“Are we ready?”

                                                             *

Natasha lay on the table in one of Stark’s labs. She had been sedated so they could work in peace.

“This is insane,” Bruce muttered, twitching his scope slightly and watching the digital readout, waiting until he hit a screw. “The things we do? We’re insane. Remember when it was just a little science lab?” Tony was sitting on a stool on her other side.

“Problems of a superhero,” he sighed dramatically. “Life story.”

“I’m serious, Stark.” The beeping red light told him he had hit gold.

“I know. But we’re doing crazy things for a good reason and that’s what matters.” Bruce snorted and placed the tiny device, making sure it was secure before retracting his scope.

“We’re going to get ourselves killed.” He pressed firmly against her wound to stop the bleeding.

“You’re pretty damn hard to kill, if you haven’t forgotten.”

“That doesn’t mean you guys are.” The doctor bandaged her wound and pulled her shirt back down. “Natasha already got herself killed.”

“And she got herself back too,” Tony said easily, as if death was nothing special. “This is the price we pay. It isn’t the life we chose, but it’s the life we’ve gotta live.”

“Now you just sound like you’re quoting a comic book,” Bruce muttered, stripping off his gloves and adjusting his glasses.

“Did it work?” The doctor smiled tiredly in reply.

“We have to do what we have to do.”

“Let’s go get Barton.”

                                                              *

Clint pressed the plunger on the needle and watched the liquid flow through her IV line and into her wrist. The effect was almost immediate; her eyes fluttered open and she tilted her head to look at him.

“Rise and shine.”

“Mhm..” she sat up slowly, yawning, and removed her IV. “You ready?”

“Yes.” He leaned down and kissed her gently before helping her to her feet.

Natasha and Clint were in a grocery shop. They had a grocery cart filled with several random items and Clint had a grocery list clutched in one hand. They knew they had been spotted. The two had made a new tunnel out of Stark towers (which Tony had closed behind them) and emerged from a hotel downtown. As they entered the grocery store both spies had noticed the two sleek limousines coming down the street.

“Butter?” She muttered, pointing towards the dairy section. He nodded and they made their way quickly across the store. Both of them were tense. They knew attack was coming and they were supposed to act casual, to pretend to be a normal couple going to the store. It went against all their training. Before Clint could pick up the box of butter there was a crash from behind them and they both spun, pulling out their weapons. Barton shot a man rushing towards them in the skull, but was thrown backwards when another leapt out at him and threw a punch that sent him crashing through the glass door protecting the milk. He regained his feet immediately, the hood falling away from his face as he spun, hitting the larger man in the solar plexus with a kick. He staggered a few feet back, giving Hawkeye the opportunity to shoot his knee. It gave way beneath him and he dropped, first to his knees and then to the floor as Hawkeye snapped his neck.

Natasha shot three men before anyone so much as touched her. They had an unlimited supply of lackies, and the more she killed the easier it would be for the others. A fourth grabbed her around the neck and put her in a choke hold. She kicked him in the groin until he released her and she dropped to the ground, sweeping his feet out from underneath him and shooting him before he hit the ground.

“Stop,” a voice drawled from her left. They both looked up to find a tall man with black hair holding a gun to a young girl’s neck. Her screaming mother was being restrained by another man in a suit. “Drop your weapons.”

He knew they wouldn’t let a civilian die if they could help it, especially a child. They each lowered their gun to the floor and straightened back up, raising their hands. “Romanoff, your second.” She raised an eyebrow and procured another pistol from her jacket, dropping it. “And the knife.” Natasha pulled a slim blade from the inside of her combat boot.

Six men approached, three for each of them, and clapped thick cuffs onto their wrists behind their backs. They were marched out to the parking lot, where an armoured black van had pulled up beside the limos.

“Nice rides,” Barton said. The man patting him down punched him in the face and continued. The search was over in a minute, leaving three guns, six knives, two sedatives and Black Widow’s ‘spider’ bites on the asphalt. The man with dark hair circled around to face them, a smirk etching his features.

“It’s been too long, Red.”

“I don’t know, I could go a lifetime without seeing you, Wesley.” He slapped her across the face and grabbed her chin, jerking it up. “You’ll be a stupid slave again in no time,” he hissed. “But oh how I will enjoy your rehabilitation…” She jerked forward and slammed her forehead against his nose as hard as she could. He cursed profusely and pulled away, clutching his nose as blood spattered on the pavement. “You bitch,” he growled, whipping out a handkerchief and using it to stem the flow. “Put them in the truck!”

*****


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

The truck was well built to contain them. One side had a plain bench, and the other had a bench with arm and leg shackles. The men forced them to sit and clapped the shackles on before sitting opposite them, their weapons at the ready. Natasha glanced sideways at Clint. He had a few glass cuts on his face and his eye was starting to bruise, but otherwise he looked alright.

“I’m sorry I got you into this,” she muttered.

“You couldn’t have known they’d follow us,” he replied, catching on immediately. Their captors needed to be convinced they had been captured completely accidentally.

“Shut up, Romanova,” Wesley growled, hitting her across the face with the butt of his gun.

“Leave her alone.”

“Oh, how sweet,” the man drawled, brushing some invisible dust off his black suit. “Clint Barton to the rescue, eh? You think there’s anything you can do to help her?” The man grabbed her arm and started twisting it, her wrist still caught in the cuff. With a snap her arm broke. “You’re defenseless.” Hawkeye gritted his teeth but didn’t answer. He wouldn’t give the man another reason to hurt her. He looked at her. If anything, his partner looked bored. She was unphased by the odd angle of her forearm. She was used to it, he supposed.

“Still the same, then,” she muttered, resting her head back against the side of the van. “You’ve always been full of yourself Wesley, but now even more. Did somebody get a promotion?” He scowled and hit her with the gun again, this time leaving a shallow cut along her cheek.

“Shut up before I make you,” he hissed, his dark eyes flashing dangerously.

“You never could shut me up,” she said calmly. He grinned.

“Yes. You were a screamer, weren’t you?” She paled noticeably and he leaned closer, his breath hot on her face. “My new boys will have lots of fun with you,” he said maliciously, eyeing her. “Almost ten years and you’ve still got that body.” He sat back with a whistle. Clint closed his eyes, forcing a calm that he didn’t feel. In truth, he was ready to rip throats out with his own teeth, imagining what this man had done to her. She sat stoically, her back straight and her muscles tensed as if she was preparing to spring. Which she couldn’t, obviously, but that’s what she looked like anyway. Her jaw twitched just slightly, and he knew she was beyond furious. Anger she would show, in some form or another. This, this was the death stare. Men had literally fainted under that gaze, but Wesley just smiled right back at her, drumming his fingers against his leg.

“Where are you taking us?” Hawkeye asked, breaking the silence.

“Do you really think I’d tell you?” The man spat.

“You went to all the trouble of bringing me along, figured I was on the VIP list or something.” With a nod from their commander, one of the guards leaned forward and punched him in the stomach again.

“You talk, you hurt. If I were you, buddy, I’d save your strength. You won’t last an hour before you break, but you sure as hell better last 15 minutes. I’ve got money riding on you, Barton.”

“Break?”

“You’ll be our newest addition.” He waved his arms. “Welcome to the family.”

“I’d rather die before becoming what you are.”

“That’s what she said,” he jerked his head at Natasha. “And look how many people she killed for us.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?” He took her chin in his hand. She promptly bit down on his hand as hard as she could. “AGH! LET GO!” He jerked his hand away, spraying blood everywhere. She spat a finger onto the floor of the truck and looked up at the men, arching an eyebrow. Most of them had a mixture of horror and disgust written across their face. “YOU SLIMY LITTLE!” He shrieked, taking the gauze an officer offered and wrapping his hand in it. “Give me your gun!” The soldier handed it over and he shot her thigh. She hissed slightly but kept her mouth firmly shut, staring him down. When he finally made eye contact with her again she spat his own blood onto his pants, then smiled.

“I’m going to make you regret being born, Romanova, I’m going to break every bone in your body. Twice,” he hissed, holding his injured hand close to his chest.

“I regret that you were born. Does that count?” He looked like he was battling his instincts. Normally he would simply pull out the gun and shoot her, repetitively. But they were still a long ways away from the facility, and the doctors that used to put her back together when he was finished with her. He stood and moved towards the entrance to the front of the truck.

“Beat her,” he said, then disappeared behind the metal door.

                                                       ***

“Nat.” Clint shook his partner gently. She didn’t move, so he sighed, grabbed her finger and touched it to the electrical force shield surrounding them. The jolt did wake her up and her eyes flew open (although one was swollen shut.)

“What the hell?”

“Sorry. You wouldn’t wake up.”

“Where are we?”

“Plane, some type. In an electric cage separated from the rest of the ship.” He glanced around. “We’ve been airborne for at least four hours.”

“I’ve been out that long?” She sat up quickly, then wished she hadn’t as the world spun and her vision darkened. He grabbed her and lowered her gently back to the metal floor.

“How bad?”

“Six broken ribs, three fractured. Your collarbone, two fingers, four toes and your arm are broken. Your face is totally bruised and you’ve got a skull fracture under your right eye, which is why it’s so swollen. That should go down a bit soon but it’ll hurt like hell. And your leg, obviously.” She frowned slightly.

“I can work with that.” He rolled his eyes. She had always been this way. No matter what injury, she would continue. Her leg could be broken and she’d still run. Her hand could be crushed and she’d still fire a gun. Her body seemed to defy the laws of physics simply because of her stubborn refusal to let injuries get in her way.

“Stop provoking him. Please,” he added, seeing her look of incredulity. “You’re beat to hell and we’re not even there yet. We’ve still gotta be able to fight our way out of there.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I know I don’t. But you don’t understand me either. I don’t know what it’s like. I don’t...I didn’t go through what you went through. I can’t even begin to comprehend the pain that man and others like him have caused you.” She averted her eyes, curling in on herself slightly like a protective shell. He lay down next to her, wrapping one arm around her very, very gently. “But I have been there. I’ve been there during the nightmares, and the daymares, and the breakdowns. I’ve been there when there were triggers and I’ve been there when things went to shit. I don’t understand, but I know. Trust me, if given the opportunity I’d probably rip his finger off too.” He paused. “But then I’d remember that that wouldn’t do any good. The only thing it’d do would be to get me hurt, or you. And I don’t want that, okay?” He sighed. “You’ll be given the chance to fight your demons head on, Red. Soon. But let’s wait until the playing field is leveled a bit. Until there’s a way to win. There’s no point in fighting if there’s no way to win.” She sighed, a deep shuddering sigh that rocked her to her core and sent tingles through him.

“I hate him.”

“I know.”

“I want to kill him.”

“I know.”

“I want to kill all of them. For what they’ve done to me. For what they took from me. For what they made me.”

“Hey.” He touched her chin gently, tapping it so she would look at him. “They did stuff that no...anything, nothing should do. And they deserve to die, and they will die. But you--you’re perfect. And that’s all you, Nat. They tried to make you into something you were not and you broke free. You made yourself something different. You are what you made yourself, and you are something to be proud of.”

“You helped make me too.” He nodded slightly.

“I helped you make yourself. And you’re wonderful. Nothing you did in the past or could do in the future would change the fact that you have done more good than bad in this world, and that’s more than most people can say. You’re good, Nat. You grew up around the worst of the worst and you still survived. You, not the robot they tried to make you. Some people do tax fraud. You kill bad people that don’t deserve to be alive.”

“You know, some people say you’re not talkative,” she said quietly, a small smile twisting her lips. He grinned. The fact that she was able to joke helped to reassure him that she was not lost in a haze of anger. That anger only gave the Red Room power.

“Maybe they just need to get to know me better,” he said lightly, brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes.

“I kind of like it. It’s like a secret. Only I know that the real Clint Barton, deep deep down is a hopeless sap.” He nudged her lightly.

“Shh. Don’t tell anyone. I’ve been working my entire life to hide it.” She grinned at him, but he noticed her eyelids starting to droop. “Nat? You’re concussed.” She wrinkled her nose disapprovingly.

“To hell with it. I’m so tired, Clint.” As if to prove her point she yawned widely and stretched, followed by a wince as her battered body protested.

“I don’t care. You can stay awake voluntarily or I will poke your ribs every time you close your eyes.” She glowered at him, but he merely smiled tiredly back into her bruised face. “The things we do for the people we love.”

                                                    ***

Steve paced back and forth, his arms crossed over his chest. Sam was perched on the arm of the sofa, watching him with the shadow of concern flickering across his face. Thor was sitting on--on, not at-- the bar, twirling his hammer. Tony and Bruce were sitting at the table with a screen projected in front of them, muttering and making modifications to some design. A beep called their attention to the large screen set in the wall. Most of it was taken up by a map of the world, which was gradually growing smaller as they honed in on Clint and Natasha’s location. The small bar on the side showed a number that was changing.

“They’re moving at least.”

“Still in America.”

“What does the number signify, Stark?” Thor questioned, peering at it closely.

“That’s Natasha’s heart rate.” Steve turned, raising an eyebrow.

“That wasn’t part of the plan, was it?”

“When we got in there it was obvious we should do it. The position of her metal screws is right beside her femoral artery. It’s just as well hidden as the locator beacon.”

“Isn’t that,” Sam pointed at the number. “Bad?”

“Yes.” Bruce muttered, running his fingers through his hair. Her heart rate had gone from normal and started rising, eventually spiking up to 200. “Probably suffocation.” They watched the number drop down quickly, below normal. “Now she’s unconscious,” he clarified, turning away from the screen and moving into the kitchen to pour himself a fresh cup of coffee. Thor lifted a bottle of tequila from behind the bar and started drinking it as if it were water. Tony didn’t even protest.

“Those two are going to get themselves killed,” Steve muttered.

“Eh.” Tony bit into a sandwich before setting it aside in order to continue his typing. “They almost got themselves killed a few months ago. And a few months before that. And a few months before that. They’ve been almost getting themselves killed for a really long time.”

“Eventually luck runs out.”

“Oh it’s not luck,” Tony replied, not looking up from whatever he was typing. “Barton, well. He’s the best archer on the planet. He can hit a moving target going 600 miles an hour without looking. That’s not luck, it’s talent.”

“You always act so superior, Stark, and yet you really do think highly of us, don’t you?” The captain replied.

“Oh yeah. Thor, he’s crazy with that hammer and that lightning. Banner I admire as a scientist and I’m a fan of the rage monster. You’re...a very strong righteous leader. Wilson’s got freaking wings, man.” He narrowed his eyes and typed furiously at his keyboard. “I just happen to have friends that are talented.” Steve sighed.

“Look, Tony, I know things have been tense the past few days…”

“No problem,” the billionaire cut him off, actually looking up long enough to make eye contact. “You fight for what you think is right. I get it. But you gotta understand-- we’re not civilians. Your instinct is to protect. So is ours. There’s a difference between having our backs as a teammate and trying to protect us on your own.” He picked up a tablet and started walking around the room with it, occasionally swiping the screen or tapping in a new command.

“I know. I guess I’m still not used to this team thing.” Tony grinned.

“None of us are. Thor’s from a different world. Banner’s been in hiding since forever. I’ve ‘never played well with others,’ you were a capsicle. Wilson was a troop. Barton’s an archer, Natasha grew up in the Red Room for god’s sake. We’re all loners. And now we’re a team.”

“Yeah.” Steve sat down and Sam put an arm around him. “So we wait.”

“So we wait,” Tony agreed, holding out the tablet to Bruce. He took it in one hand, sipping from his coffee mug in the other.

“What are you doing over there anyway?” Sam asked.

“We’re making your armour.” The man blinked.

“What?”

“Your wings were damaged, so we remade them. With upgrades.” He flicked his fingers and the schematics for the wings appeared on the screen.

“Cool,” Sam breathed. They had the same design as before, but the metal had been upgraded to a more sturdy metal and the joints that held each portion of the wing in place had been fixed so it would be more difficult to tear away. Also, what had once been a backpack turned into full chest armour.

“Figured you could use some more protection. Bullet proof, just like my suits. The suit comes out of the backpack, just like the wings do. When you activate the wings, the chest armour will build itself around you just like my suit does.”

“That’s great. But you realize I’m on ship duty, right?”

“So? You’ll be needing those wings in the future, buddy. You’ve just started your superhero career, no way are you backing out now.” Sam smiled to himself. It had been odd at first, trying to fit in with the Avengers. They may not be the tightest group of people he’d ever met, but they were close knit. After Loki’s return they had simply accepted him as a regular part of life. He moved in, joined meals and fought over movies on movie night. It was sort of like having a big dysfunctional family.

His train of thought was broken when Tony yelled across the room at Thor,

“Hey! That’s your third bottle of tequila!”

“Your Earth alcohol does not satisfy me, Stark,” the god rumbled, setting the bottle down. “It is weak.”

“And you will be too if you keep drinking. We’ve got an evil organization to blow up within the next 24 hours, remember?” He tapped a finger against his skull. “Got to have your head on straight.” Thor scowled but did not move to continue his drinking, for which they were all eternally grateful. Despite their ‘weak’ alcohol, Thor had managed to get drunk many times before, and no one wanted to endure hours of songs they didn’t know and claps on the back so hard he fractured ribs.

“Looks like they’re leaving the states,” Tony muttered.

“Natasha’s awake again. Her heartbeat is a little irregular but not too bad.”

“Come on,” Tony motioned them towards the elevator. “Let’s get ready.”

                                                    ***

Wesley came and cuffed their hands and ankle together before leading them out of the plane. The ramp led right into the facility, so they had no idea where they were or what their surroundings looked like.

“Romanova,” he said, motioning for her to lay down on a metal table. There were two guards sitting behind what she assumed were computer screens. Clint gave her a nudge and she laid down. Wesley moved over to the guards. “Romanova, Natalia. Check for foreign objects that aren’t currently on file.” He glanced over at her. “And ignore the new bullet in her leg.” The blonde guard nodded and there was a whirring sound accompanied by several loud clicks as a light on the ceiling moved up and down her body. After a minute it stopped.

“Nothing new, sir.”

“Good. Get up,” he ordered coldly, grabbing her broken arm and tugging her away. “Barton, your turn.” Clint scowled at him but laid down and they proceeded to run the same test on him.

“He has a foreign object in his leg, sir.” Wesley pulled up his pants leg.

“That was one of our men. Anything else?”

“No sir.” Keeping a firm grip on Natasha, he grabbed Clint’s arm and yanked him to his feet as well.

“I have just the spot for you two.” Accompanied by several lackies carrying guns, he led them through a thick metal door activated by a keycard and down a plain white hallway. Clint immediately felt like he was in a mental hospital with the bright lights and blank endless walls. The distant sounds of screaming only helped the image along.

“I kept your room for you, Natalia.” They turned a corner to the left and then again. These corridors were lined with more of the same thick metal doors, windowless. She didn’t reply, just clenched her jaw tightly and stared straight ahead. She was making an effort to keep her back as straight as possible, which Wesley seemed to take as a personal challenge. He would stride ahead faster than her and yank her forwards, trying to overbalance her. She quickly corrected herself, but he smiled.

“Ah, here we are.” They stopped in front of a door. It was the same as all the others, save for the red widow stamped on the metal. Wesley slid his keycard over the lock  and as the door opened, he thrust both of them inside. “Make yourselves comfortable,” he said, leering, as the door slammed shut behind him.

Clint looked around. The room had the same blank white walls, floor and ceiling as the hallway. There was a metal shelf, in one corner, and a metal sink and toilet in the other. The difference here was the stains. It looked as if someone had halfheartedly scrubbed blood off the floor, the walls. Some of it hadn’t been cleaned at all, probably as another mind game on Natasha. She sat down heavily on the ‘bed’ and leaned her head back against the wall.

“I never thought I’d be back here.” Slowly he sat next to her. The handcuffs prevented him from wrapping an arm around her, so he settled with resting his shoulder against hers.

“I know.”

“I swore I’d die before I let them take me back here.”

“I know.” She let out a long sigh and opened her eyes.

“I’m sorry I got you into this.” It was Natasha’s way of telling him that there were eyes ears in the room.

“It’s not your fault.” She smiled ruefully.

“If only that were true.” His partner looked around the room and he saw her shiver involuntarily. From his arm pressed against hers he could tell she was shaking. As much as she’d like to pretend it was alright, being back here was affecting her badly.

“We’ll fight them. We’ve just got to resist. Eventually they’ll give up and kill us.” Soon the others will come and we’ll get the fuck out. There was that small smile again.

“Yeah. Regretting bringing me back with you all those years ago?” She stared down at the floor.

“Nah. You’re much more exciting than the other agents anyway.” She snorted and then winced as her ribs protested. His smile faded. It was easy to forget when Natasha was hurt, she was so good at hiding it. “Okay Tasha, it’s been six hours.” He stood. “Lie down for a bit, okay?”

“Clint, why don’t you--”

“That bench is hardly more comfortable than the floor.” He sat down on the ground and then laid back. He had to turn on his side so as not to lie on his arms. She sighed and laid down as well, rolling onto her non broken arm.

“You’re bossy.”

“You’re kidding, right? You’re way bossier than I am.” She yawned widely, her eyes already starting to close.

“I’m bossy because I’m right…”

He watched her for what seemed like hours. She was asleep, but by the way her muscles spasmed and sweat glistened on her forehead he knew she wasn’t dreaming about anything pleasant. He had half a mind to wake her up, but sleep was sleep and her body could use some of it. Eventually he sighed, closed his eyes, and thought of flying.

                                                       ***

The door banged open and Natasha jumped up so fast she nearly kicked Clint, who was on the floor. He too rose to face Wesley.

“You look horrible,” he smiled at both of them. Clint noticed that he once again had all ten fingers. Neither of them replied. “The silent treatment. Really? That’s not very mature.” He snapped his fingers and guards (now wearing average clothes with the exception of weapons) stepped forwards and seized them, dragging the spies out into the hall. They started moving in the opposite direction of the way they’d come, deeper into the facility. “We’ll start Clint out at level 1, hm? A warm-up?” Natasha’s lips were white as she pressed them tightly together. “And you….” The man frowned. “Were at level 16 when you broke, yes?” She didn’t reply, so he nudged the guards away from her and grabbed her neck, slamming her back against the wall. Her already injured head pounded but she managed to stay conscious. “Answer me.”

“Yes.”

“I was right. It was level 18.” He leered at her. “Level 16 would be easier, hm? No. We’ll start at 19.” He dragged her back into the hallway and they started moving again.

“What levels?” Clint couldn’t stop himself from asking.

“Level 1 is electroshock torture. We increase the intensity through level five, and then level 6-10 is physical torture, then 11-15 is both electroshock and physical.”

“And level 16 up?” Wesley grinned.

“You’ll have to ask miss Romanova later.” They reached two doors that were gold instead of silver, and some of the guards took Clint into the first while Wesley and three others led Natasha into the second. A table lay in the center of the room, wrist and ankle cuffs open. Several machines and cabinets full of torture devices lined the walls.

One of the guards approached and jabbed a needle into her neck before she could stop him. The effect was immediate. Her body froze and she fell, only to be caught by her captors.

“You have a reputation for being particularly hard to restrain. My boys didn’t want to take chances.” They removed her hand and ankle cuffs only to swiftly lock her into the ones on the table. “We’ll wait for paralysis to be over, wouldn’t want to miss any of the fun.” He glanced at his watch. “Boys, start at level 18 and when I get back we’ll kick it up a notch.” He departed, appearing a moment later in Clint’s room. He too was strapped to a table, looking furious. Electrodes and wires were attached to his chest. Next door Natasha was screaming Russian curse words at her captors.

“Ready, sir.”

“Begin.” A tall blonde man flipped the switch and electricity crackled through the hand and ankles cuffs, through the electrodes. Clint’s back arched off the table and he gasped, then clamped his mouth firmly shut as his muscles rippled. “Resilient. I shouldn’t be surprised, Natasha never did ally herself with the weak. Level 5.” The whirring of the machine grew louder and blue electricity coursed through him. It felt like every inch of his being was on fire, like he was being fried. He had been through interrogations before. He had been waterboarded, stabbed, shot, cut, burnt and broken multiple times. He had jumped out windows and fallen on pavement. He was by no means a man who hadn’t felt pain. He was quite experienced with it. But nothing had prepared him for the pain he felt now. It was like every injury he had ever obtained all at once and more. Being stabbed to death would feel better than this. Vaguely, in the back of his foggy mind he registered screaming. It was his own, but he didn’t seem to be in control of him. It was ripped from the archer’s lungs unwillingly, unhampered. He didn’t have the strength to twitch a finger, let alone close his mouth. His eyes watered, he felt dizzy. He wanted to pass out, to forget, to leave all of it behind. He didn’t.

Over six hours later he was half dragged, half carried back to his cell and thrown onto the bed. His eyes closed, and he was asleep in seconds.

                                                        ***

Clint woke up slowly. First he became aware. Aware of how sore he was, how his whole body felt singed. Aware of the cold hard metal beneath his back and the ringing in his ears. Then his eye opened. It was bright, staring at the lights, so he looked away. At the wall. Faded blood spattered across it. The pain in his head was overwhelming, so much so that he nearly closed his eyes and went back to sleep. It would be so easy to get away from the pain for a while. Then he remembered something. Natasha. Wesley had said that the excruciating pain he had felt was a level five. And that Natasha was at 18. He rolled over, groaning, and had to pause as the world returned from almost darkness. She was lying on the floor, her back to him . Her hair was pooled around her head, looking too much like blood for his liking.

“Tasha,” he croaked, his voice barely more than a whisper. She didn’t move, she barely breathed. If not for the twitching of the fingers in right and injured arm, he wouldn’t have been sure she was alive. “Natasha!” He hissed louder, throat burning. He lowered himself onto the floor and crawled to her.The shirt and pants she had been wearing were gone, which allowed him to see more fully the extent of her injuries. The bullet hole in her leg was messy, as it had never properly been bandaged or even examined. It looked infected, as did the one in her abdomen.There were lacerations on her back that hadn’t been there before. He wasn’t surprised about that. Her back had a large collection of scars from such cuts.  “Wake up.” He took her shoulder gently and rolled her onto her back. “Wake UP!” She didn’t move. His partner was a light sleeper. She woke if a floorboard creaked, a breeze rustled the curtains and she even woke herself when she moved in her sleep. So when physical contact-- which usually got him a black eye in the morning-- didn’t wake her up, he knew something was wrong. “NATASHA,” he yelled. She winced. He relaxed slightly as she went through a process similar to his. Her muscles twitched, and her eyes opened slowly.

“Shh.” She tried to roll back onto her side away from him but her whole body protested and she had to choke on a sob.

“Nat?”

“Just let me sleep,” she begged, closing her eyes and raising her good arm to cover her ears.

“No,” he said firmly.

“I’m tired!”

“You’re in pain.”

“Same thing.”

“No. You’re sweating.” She let out something between a snort and a sob.

“I wonder...why.”

“It’s been hours since they tortured you. And you weren’t having a nightmare.” She had to take several seconds to consider what he was saying.

“Oh come...ON.” He helped her to sit up against the wall.

“Look at me.” She opened her eyes, frowning at him. Her irises were blown and her eyes were rimmed with red. He checked her pulse. It was slower than normal. “They drugged you alright.” She groaned and made a disgusted face.

“How….are you?” Her words slurred slightly. It was a question she only asked when she was hurt too badly to explain.

“A hell of a lot better off than you.”

“Just tell me so we can get on with it.” He sighed.

“Level 5...it was...the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. I….probably passed out. And screamed myself hoarse. And God, I just...it...” She leaned her head against his. She understood, he knew. “Nat, what are the levels for?”

“You don’t wanna...wan to know.”

“I do.”

“Age. Average...a...age. Some people were... year...years ahead or...be...behind. I was.”

“They did THAT to you when you were FIVE?”

“It wasn’t...all just kill-killing people you kn-know,” she said sarcastically. He wanted to hug her. It would most definitely hurt her, so he settled for thinking up creative ways to torture Wesley to death.

“Where are you hurt?” He asked seriously. Since she had previously been wearing clothes, he didn’t know which bruises were old or new. The multitude of deep cuts and burns littering her body he knew were new.

“Not too bad... He had just started in on a freshy repaired body when I passed out. Cuts, burns, bruises, fractured kneecaps, bro-broken bones. Definitely several...facial fractures and...ribs. My wrist...too. Nothing...too...too bad.”

“How exactly does it work?”

“Dun..don’t know. I just know….he can do anything short of….shoot-shooting me in the head and it’ll...repair. He can stab and shoot and set on fi-fire without...worrying about killing. Mus-have reconstructed me a thousan timess today. ”

“I’m sorry Tasha.”

“Wha...for?”

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to kill these evil bastards sooner.” She gave him a wry smile and he grabbed onto the ‘bed,’ using it for support as he rose to his feet. After the initial dizziness he moved to the sink and drank hungrily from the tap. When he could drink no more he filled his hands with water and brought it to Natasha’s lips. After several trips her thirst was somewhat satisfied and the pounding of his migraine had returned to somewhere bearable. Now that he looked, it wasn’t just the electricity he was sore from. His arms were definitely more bruised then they had been the other day, and upon lifting up his shirt he realized that his abdomen was almost as badly bruised as Natasha’s. His face also felt more swollen.

“How’s..sss..your mobility?”

“I’m not 100%.” He turned and sat on the bed. “But I’ll do fine. I’m not sure you’ll even be able to walk.” She grimaced.

“I can deallll….with the bullet and the-the knees. But I’m not sure abou...the drugs yet.”

“You’re slurring several hours after they gave it to you. It’s safe to assume they gave you as much as possible.”

“Hel me uppp.” He stood and took her gently around the waist, lifting her up. She grabbed onto his arm and leaned over, looking about ready to throw up. After almost a minute of panting and dry heaving she straightened, her face as white as the walls and she was still clinging to him for dear life, leaning all her weight on him. “Dammit.” He picked her up and set her down on the bed, where she slid into an upright position against the wall. He sat next to her.

“Chloral Hydrate,” he sniffed. “With alcohol to enhance is my guess.”

“I hate drugs.”

“I know.”

“How long d..do you think they’ll tak….take, dammit, to wear off?”

“Hopefully within 2-6 hours.” She knew exactly how long it would take for the drugs to wear off. She was quite knowledgeable in such drugs. What she was really asking was how much longer it would take the others to track them down. His own sense of time felt distorted and Natasha had been unconscious for several hours of their travel. “On a scale from one to ten, how bad is it?”

“Righ now? Seven.” He paled considerably and he felt a shiver run down his spine. A ten for Natasha was beyond imaginable. When she had been gunned down, shot six times and beaten she said it was a three. After the events of last year with half her bones broken and every inch of her battered, she said the pain was a 3.5. He was having serious doubts about her ability to get herself out of here. He could carry her but it would severely decrease his hand to hand skills, which were already less honed then his long distance.

“So you grew up here?”

“Depends. This rooooomm coul have been...recreated for...me. Or it could be...real, just in a different location.”

“How many hours did you spend in here a day?”

“Let me out...to train. 11 hours a day combat and torture….4 weapons 4 technology, 1 for...food and shower, 4 sleeping. Of course it...changed as I got..older.” She yawned. “Learning seduction and....” She stopped herself short. “Spent...more time here.” She glanced down at the bed and her jaw clenched.

“I’m sorry.” Her bottom lip trembled but she quickly bit it, squaring her shoulders defensively.

“I kill...ed...so many people.” She looked down at her lap. Her whole body was shaking. She hated this, hated being weak. Natasha was slowly learning to share her feelings and emotions with him, but this place was the deepest darkest part of her. She had never intended to share this side of herself so completely with him. And now he was here, sitting in this room where so many horrible things had occurred, in this facility where she had been trained to kill without pause or emotion. “Innocents. We...don’t kill innocents.” She glanced up at him. “I liked it. I liked killing.” He wanted to stop her, to tell her it was alright and that he didn’t care what she had done. But he also wanted her to continue and get it off her chest. Who knew if she would have the chance again. “They...when I killed someone,” her words slurred slightly, but she continued. “They gave me food. A hot shower, a full night’s sleep. They rewarded me. Like a dog...perform a trick and get a prize. When I failed it was b-bad. They hurt me continuously for...days. I k-killed children and all I thought about wh-while doing it was the soft bed I would sleep in that night.”

“Natasha.” He took her chin gently (her face was so battered) and turned her face towards him, silencing her rambling. “I forgive you. The world has forgiven you, at least the ones that matter. You’ve saved millions of lives.” The redhead leaned against his shoulder, and he saw real tears form in her eyes. He had seen fake ones for multiple reasons on missions, but he had only seen her truly cry on very rare occasions.

“It h-hurts so bad to be here,” she whispered, so quietly he didn’t think even the bug would be able to pick it up.

“Is that why it’s a seven?” She nodded and clutched his t-shirt. Three of her fingers were broken, black and blue, but she gripped it tightly anyway. Her right arm was worse off. Broken at her upper arm, forearm and wrist the bruising looked like internal bleeding.

“I want to kill them,” she murmured, pressing her face against him and breathing in his scent. Taking comfort in his presence. “I won’t break. I w-won’t. No matter what they do to me.” He couldn’t decide whether to be heartbroken or put a hole in the wall with his fist.

“I know you won’t.”

The door banged open.

“Awe, how sweet,” Wesley jeered. “Found yourself another master?” She raised her head, all signs of weakness gone. She sat with a rigidity, her eyes cold and her battered face emotionless.

“Shut up, Wesley,” Hawkeye snapped.

“Oh, protective is he,” the man hissed, his eyes glittering. “Mad that my boys get to fuck your girlfriend’s brains out, hm?” Clint made a move towards him but in an instant a gun was out and Wesley put a bullet through his arm. The prisoner sat back with a hiss, raising a hand to cover the bleeding wound. It had gone straight through and buried itself in the wall behind him. While it hadn’t broken his bone, it still hurt like hell. “Consider that a warning shot. There are many more painful places I could shoot you,” the man in the suit said dangerously. “Now, come.” The guards lurched forward and handcuffed their hands. Natasha’s behind her back, his in front. The blonde guard holding Natasha ran his large hands up her bare stomach to her chest.

“Still think we should have left her naked.” He moved his hands in a way that made Natasha’s nostrils flare. “Nice tits.” Clint moved forward but his guard bashed him over the head with a gun and he dropped to his knees, his vision darkening.

“Ignore them,” she said. Wesley frowned.

“You’re a little too together for my taste. Wearing off so soon, hm?” He grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him while Hawkeye rose to his feet. He felt blood on the back of his neck. “Ah no, definitely not enough. You always did have excellent drug resilience.” He pulled out a large needle filled with a clear liquid and jammed it into her neck, injecting it directly into her bloodstream. Her eyelids flickered as she fought the effects, even as her feet started to give way beneath her.

“Why….drug me…” she slurred, the blonde now completely supporting her weight with one hand on her breast and the other gripping her broken ribs so hard she wanted to vomit.

“My men haven’t forgotten Alexander.” With a jerk of his head they started to move. The blonde tossed Natasha over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and followed as the other guard shoved Clint down the hallway. They took a different turn then last time and entered a room. It was a one person shooting range. The guard dragged Natasha out into the room and shackled her to the wall. Her eyes were barely open as the drugs took their hold on her.

“What the hell is this,” the archer growled.

“Simple. Shoot her.” A gun was placed in his hand, but he knew three guns were pointed at him should he make a wrong move.

“No.” Wesley sighed.

“Either you shoot her or I do,” he said, raising his own weapon. “And I’ve got six bullets just waiting to bury themselves in her. A graze doesn’t count either.” He clenched his jaw and glanced out at his partner. He had shot her before. He shot her when their coms went down and she was about to run into a soon-to-explode building. An arrow through the thigh had been enough for her to look around to where he was perched on the roof, jumping up and down and screaming at her. He had shot her when, during a night terror, she tried to kill him. But shooting her now, while she was so drugged she couldn’t support her own weight, she would be defenseless. And she was already injured.

“I won’t wait forever,” Wesley snapped. “I find that this early in the morning I tend to be trigger happy.” Clint ground his teeth and turned to Natasha. She would shoot him without hesitation in this position. One bullet was better than six. He raised the gun and fired. The kick was even worse with his arm screwed up and bleeding, so he took a step back to compensate. He had shot her in the arm. Specifically her right arm that was already thrice broken.

“Smart,” Wesley said grudgingly, taking the gun back. “I’ll make a good agent out of you.” He looked out at Natasha. “I was going to have her shoot you, but I may have given her too large of a dosage.” He frowned slightly. “Perhaps her resilience isn’t as good as I thought.” With a sigh he turned and fired. Hawkeye dropped to his knees as blood soaked through his shirt.

“Really?” He snarled, rolling onto his back and clutching at his side. Wesley had shot him in the appendix.

Before the man could reply, the whole building shook.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning! Heavily implied rape/non-con. Nothing graphic, nothing specified, nothing confirmed.

CHAPTER 5

Wesley and his men charged out into the hallway, locking both him and Natasha in the room. Clint rolled onto his side, biting back a groan. He was losing a lot of blood.

“Barton!” He jumped to his feet and swayed, grabbing onto the wall for support.

“The hell?”

“Stark hacked into the system and located the room Natasha was in.” Steve’s voice was coming through a small speaker on the ceiling.

“Great. Rogers, we need you here right now.”

“What?” He said sharply. “Natasha said she could get you out into the main area. You’re deep inside”

“They drugged her. She’s out of it.”

“Damn. I’m coming in.”

“Steve!”

“What?”

“Bring a pressure dressing and painkillers.” He looked at his arm, then at Natasha’s. “Three pressure dressings. And guns.”

“Got it. I’m on my way.”

                                                       ***

Iron man blasted through the heavily fortified front doors then circled back around to the outside while Steve charged inside. Thor was surrounded by what looked like a small army of gun bearing soldiers. Tony flew by, knocking several of them off their feet while Thor’s hammer connected with skulls. Above, Sam was steering the Quinjet madly to avoid the tanks that were shooting at him from the roof of the building.

“This place is like Fort Knox!” Tony said, grabbing the gun out of one man’s hands and slamming the butt of it into his face.

“I do not understand that reference,” Thor muttered. They were all wearing com links (though Thor only very grudgingly) so they could communicate.

“Um...it’s really well guarded.’ Thor threw a man through the air and Tony blasted him with beam from his hand.

“It is,” the god agreed. Someone managed to bash him over the head and he faltered, his vision going in and out of focus. Stark grabbed the offender and threw him. He sailed over their heads and over the trees, screaming the whole way.

“Least it’s not as bad as New York,” Steve muttered in his ear.

“That is also true,” Thor intoned, taking two people and ramming them into each other. Tony’s eyes widened as he looked around.

“Oh shit.” There wasn’t enough time to get away. The man on the rooftop fired the bazooka and Iron man was blasted through the air. He landed in the forest, crashing through branches and eventually landing with a thud on the mossy ground.

“Stark!”

“Ow.” He raised his head.

“Shields at 43 percent, sir,” Jarvis said.

“How am I doing?”

“You have sustained a major head wound and concussion, sir.” Tony groaned and sat up. His suit was smoking and blackened, but seemed to be mostly intact. “It is not recommended you return to fighting,” Jarvis said, even as he rose to his feet.

“Shut it.”

“Yes sir.” He took off, his thrusters somewhat slower than they had been. He wondered vaguely if he should work on their design when he returned home.

Thor was looking the worse for wear by the time he returned. Someone had managed to sink a knife into the god’s massive forearm and there was blood matted in his hair.

“Is it time for Banner yet?”

“We have to wait until Steve gets them out or he might destroy the building with the three of them inside,” Sam said.

“Great.” Tony gritted his teeth and punched a man in the face, taking his rifle and firing it into the crowd. Several people dropped with cries of pain.

“I have not seen you use an automatic weapon before, Stark,” Thor said, whipping his hammer and smashing three people’s heads before holding out a hand for it to return to him.

“Don’t have a lot of power left in my suit.” He fired the gun until it was empty and then threw it at a woman, whose eyes slid back into her head as she fell. “I’m gonna go take out those tanks. You good?”

“Yes,” Thor replied. Tony took off towards the roof, flying directly at the first gunman. Tony saw his eyes widen right before a metal fist connected with his face. He topped out of his seat and the billionaire took his place, rotating the gun around to face the other guns. After figuring out the controls, he fired. The nearest tank exploded and he turned to face the other one. The woman controlling it was desperately trying to turn her gun towards him, but he got there first. Hers too exploded. He kicked open a control panel and tore through the wires, effectively disabling the gun lest anyone come to take his place.

“Does this mean I can help?” Sam asked.

“Yes.” The Falcon whooped and jumped out of the pilot’s seat, grabbing his new and improved wings. The armour built itself around his chest, snug and secure as he grabbed his goggles.

“Stark, grab Thor and fly him to the trees.” Normally Tony would take offense at being given orders, but he was too tired to care. He could feel hot blood trickling down his neck and his eyelids grew heavy. So he swooped down and grabbed Thor by the armour, lifting him into the air. His suit protested the new weight but he pushed forwards, dragging both of them into the treeline.

“What are you--” Tony stopped mid-sentence. Sam flew out of the helicarrier, a machine gun in his hands. “Oohh.” The loud sound of heavy weapons fire filled his ears as he watched the man swoop gracefully through the air, gunning down the men on the ground. Some of them fired back at him but they quickly fell under his gun. “Thank you Rogers!” Tony yelled. “Where did you find this guy?”

“At the park,” Steve panted. “Running as slow as an grandpa.”

“Hey!” Sam growled. “Just because I don’t have super serum in my blood doesn’t mean I can’t run. Ow!” One of the fallen had raised a gun and fired at him, catching his unprotected leg.

“Sam?” Steve paused in sneaking down a hallway. “Sam!”

“I’m okay. I’m okay. It’s just my leg. God, ow.” He swooped up and landed on the Quinjet, which was hovering due to some ingenious idea of Stark’s. “I got them.”

“Stark, Thor, how’re you two holding up?”

“We have sustained non-lethal injuries.”

“Get back to the ship and get ready.”

                                                        ***

Steve had just finished taking out the guard outside the door of Natasha and Clint’s room when he heard Sam get shot. He grit his teeth.

“Barton, you clear of the door?”

“Yeah.” Steve took a running start and slammed shield first into it. It took him three more goes before the door opened and he fell to the floor inside. Clint was on the ground next to him, blood pooling on the floor from a wound in his abdomen.

“Barton.” He crawled over and pulled off his backpack, quickly pulling out bandages and wrapping them tightly around the other man’s bleeding wound.

“Don’t have a lot of time.” Steve bit the cap off a needle and spit it out, injecting the painkillers into his arm. He took more gauze and wrapped it around the bloody hole in his forearm. “Help me up.” Steve stood and held out and arm to him so Hawkeye could pull himself to his feet. When he was sure the other man wasn’t about to pass out, he pressed two guns into his hands and vaulted the counter into the shooting range.

“What’d they give her?” Clint followed and started picking the locks on her cuffs.

“Chloral Hydrate.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s like roofies.” He freed her and she fell. They caught her before she hit the ground and lowered her gently. Steve started in, rebandaging her abdomen, thigh and arm.

“Is that why she’s half naked?”

“Yeah.”

“At least we got here in time.” Clint ran a hand through Natasha’s hair, tilting her head and opening her eyes, checking her pupils. Clint clenched his jaw, an action the captain didn’t miss. “I..”

“We need to go,” Clint interrupted. He hoisted Natasha up.

“I should carry her.”

“You’re fully functional, we need you to fight.” That and Clint wasn’t going to let her go.

They took off down the hallway, Steve following Tony’s instructions through the com on how to navigate out.

“Clin…”

“Hey, Tasha,” he murmured, creeping down the hall.

“Eug...my arm?”

“I shot you.” Steve raised an eyebrow.

“Okay,” she said, not bothering to ask questions. She trusted him to have made the right call. The captain beckoned them towards an open doorway, through which light was shining. When they reached the lawn the Quinjet was waiting for them. “No!” Clint stopped dead in his tracks at Natasha’s exclamation. He was dead tired and wanted nothing more than to curl up on the plane and fall asleep. But she said no.

“What is it?” Steve glanced around, taking in the field of fallen soldiers and smoke still rising from the destroyed tanks.

“S’not...not..” she dropped out of her partner’s arms and crawled to the nearest body. “No no no.”

“Nat!” She turned to look at him, her eyes wide.

“Not….real.”

“Congratulations, Natalia.” A voice boomed from the loudspeakers attached to the outside of the building. She trembled. It was a new voice for them, but one she knew all too well.

“No…”

“Yes, Natalia.”

“No!” She screamed. “You’re dead! YOU’RE DEAD!” The man chuckled.

“Little Red...It’s all just another test, my dear. We’ve been watching you….” Steve looked wildly at Hawkeye then to the woman on the ground a few feet away.

“We wanted to see your team in action. What marvelous talent you have surrounded yourself with, Natalia. I knew you would go far.”

“Shut….up!”

“Just one more test, Natalia. Now we’ve seen the Avengers. You led them right to us, and with them we will conquer the world.” Steve picked her up and the three of them started running towards the waiting plane. “You can run, Romanova, and you can hide. But I will find you,” he said, his voice almost singsong. “I’ve always found you.”

They took off at full speed.

“What the hell?” Tony’s suit folded up and Sam took off his wings. Bruce was bent over Hawkeye, who was lying on the floor, bleeding through his bandages. Steve set Natasha down on the ground next to her partner.

“Not...safe,” she muttered, wrapping an arm around her ribs as a tremor ran through her body.

“Natasha,” Steve said softly, leaning down towards her but she flinched away from him, grabbing Clint’s non-injured arm and clutching it like a lifeline.

“Then where are we going?”

“I am heading towards the destination of a town recently destroyed by a chemical spill. It is toxic air, but as long as the Quinjet remains closed it should provide sufficient cover until a plan is constructed,” Jarvis replied.

“Everybody sit down!” Bruce snapped. “I can’t work with you hovering over me.” Steve, Thor, Tony and Sam promptly sat on the bench. “I’m going to need to perform surgery,” he muttered.

“What?” Clint said, trying and failing to blink his way back to normal vision.

“Don’t worry. I’ll remove your appendix and you’ll be fine.”

“Tasha.”

“Isn’t in immediate danger of bleeding out. And even so, with that level of drugs in her system I can’t put her under.” He grabbed the archer and picked him up. For a skinny scientist, he was pretty strong, even in human form. He carried him down the way and into the small side room, set aside for operations like these. Clint groaned, closed his eyes, and passed out.

                                                         ***

Natasha opened her eyes. Her head was resting on Clint’s chest and there were pillows piled around the two of them. Her right arm had been reset and bandaged, though Bruce had left her elbow free so she could straighten and bend it. Her abdomen and ribs were completely wrapped in bandages, as were her thigh and both knees. When she tried to sit up she could feel the pull of stitches on her back.

“She’s awake.” It was Clint speaking. She rolled off him and onto the pillows, groaning.

“Where the hell are we?”

“Safe, for the moment.” She tried to sit up but Clint pushed her back down.

“You have 167 stitches in your back.”

“Overkill,” she muttered, reaching up with her good arm to brush the hair out of her eyes. Her broken fingers had been taped together. She guessed their medkit didn’t come equipped with splints.

“What’s going on?” Steve asked. She sat up slowly with assistance that she didn’t really need from her partner, and leaned against a cushion against the wall. “Who was that guy? What did he mean?”

“It was a set up. They wanted to test your abilities.”

“We killed people.”

“People are replaceable to the Red Room.”

“The guy?”

“Pietrovich. My...uncle.” She looked sideways at Clint. He looked horrible, though slightly less pale than before and the bags under his eyes were not as noticeable. His arm, abdomen and shin were bandaged where he had been shot, but he was still looking much better off than she was.

“They kidnapped you to see our skills.” She looked up at them. Bruce looked tired, Tony’s head, Thor’s arm and Sam’s calf were wrapped in gauze and they all looked a bit worse for wear, but they were, miraculously, alive.

“And now they want you. To brainwash you, like Bucky.”

“We won’t let that happen,” Tony said firmly.

“Is there any way someone could have planted a tracker on anyone?”

“We searched already. We’re clean.” She clenched her jaw.

“Let me check.”

“Clint did. You’re clean too.” She shook her head and held out an arm. Thor immediately helped her up and she leaned against the wall for support as she made her way into the bathroom. The door slammed and locked behind her.

“What?” Tony looked from Hawkeye to the closed door, confused. The archer stood (with more assistance from the god) and walked over to the door, tapping on it.

“Tasha?”

“Give me a second, Clint.” Her voice sounded strained. He heard retching sounds as if she were throwing up.

“Nat!”

“Proklyt’ye!” She cursed.

“Are you OK?”

“Shut up!” After another two minutes had passed, the door opened. There was a small metal chip covered in blood in the palm of her hand.

“What the actual fuck?” Tony muttered, reaching forward and taking it tentatively.

“Destroy it. Or something. Just...get rid of it.”

“Natasha,” Bruce said quietly.

“What?” She snapped.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Im…” she glanced down. “Fuck. Does Pepper ever fly on here?”

“Yeah..” Tony looked from her face to the blood running down the inside of her leg.

“Where does she store her luggage?” He motioned to the cabinet on her left. She rummaged around in it and pulled out a bag, disappearing into the bathroom again. She emerged a few minutes later.

“That’s embarrassing,” she muttered, blushing slightly. “I’m early. Sorry.” She gave them a small smile.

“You don’t have reproductive organs. Which means you don’t have periods.” Her expression changed instantly. One minute she was slightly embarrassed, the next her face was stone cold. “Natasha I should probably take a look.”

“No.” He leaned towards her to rest a hand gently on her shoulder but she flinched away and he stopped midair.

“I would never hurt you…” he said slowly, his voice strained. “Never.” She bit back a retort about the broken ribs she’d gotten after he’d thrown her into the wall during New York. She glanced from Thor, who looked confused, to Tony, who looked both uncomfortable and like he wanted to say something. Steve was watching her closely and Sam had a hand on the captain’s shoulder.

“Stop it! Stop staring at me!”

“We just want to help,” Steve said.

“I don’t need help,” she replied harshly, backing a few steps away from them and towards the bathroom, glancing at the open door longingly. Situations like these she was never good at. Put her in a room with six hostiles and she felt at ease, but anything personal made her want to run for the hills. “I’m fine.”

“No you’re not.”

“Yes I am,” she said forcefully. “I grew up with them. I spent seventeen years of my life with them!” She was yelling now, her hands curling into fists. “You don’t think I knew what they were going to do to me? Do you think I’m охуел?!” Her Russian accent was starting to show in her normally carefully pronounced words. “Don’t push your fucking consciences on me because you feel guilty! You don’t get to pretend you understand! Вы не знаете ничего гребаный!” Clint stepped forwards and wrapped his arms around her. At first she struggled against him, trying to free herself, but she slowly melted into his arms and clutched his shirt, sobbing into it.

“Это нормально, красный [It’s okay, Red].” He said softly, stroking a hand over her tangled curls. “Я знаю, мы не можем надеяться понять. Мы должны были быть более уважительным. Я люблю тебя, Наташа. [I know we can’t hope to understand. We should have been more respectful. I love you, Natasha.]” She leaned up on her toes and kissed him. He could taste salty tears on her lips and feel them fall onto his chest, but he didn’t care.

“Ты любишь меня даже сейчас? [You love me even now?]” The first time he told her that he loved her had been after a battle. She looked at the man she had just killed and asked him the same question.

“Я люблю тебя всегда, [I love you always]” he replied, just as he always had. She sniffed and allowed him to pick her up and carry her up to the front of the ship. He set her in the pilot’s seat and she curled on her side, dozing off. He imagined that he drugs still in her system and exhaustion had taken their toll, and she needed to rest more than any of them. Once he was sure she was asleep, he returned to the body of the jet and sat down.

“What did you say?” Tony asked.

“If I wanted you to know I would have said it in English,” he muttered.

“Is she going to be okay?” Steve asked. Clint chuckled.

“Natasha is stronger mentally than all of us. What you see as hell, she sees as her childhood. She doesn’t need your help or your pity, she needs you to treat her like a fucking human being.”

“I do,” Steve said defensively.

“You treat her like a woman. Like she’s fragile.”

“She--”

“Has her moments of weakness like every other person on the planet. What you can do is give her whatever she needs in the moment and forget about it. Like when you showed up at her apartment drunk and crying and she helped you but didn’t say a word about it afterwards.” Steve glanced at the floor. Clint had watched from the bedroom doorway as she wrapped the soldier in a blanket, made him tea and stroked his hair until he fell asleep. When they considered it, Natasha had helped all of them at one time or another. Problems with Pepper or Jane, nightmares from the war, fear of harming the others. Each of them felt slightly sheepish as they sat down.

“So, where are we going?” Sam asked.

“Where would they least expect us to go?”

                                                        ***


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry there's not a lot of plot in this chapter, I've been recovering from a dislocated dominant arm shoulder and writing hasn't been that easy. There will be more development next time!

CHAPTER 6

Natasha opened her eyes. She was lying on a bed and could hear soft voices around her. Sitting up, she realized she was in a large hotel room. The rest of her team was sitting around the table, but they looked up when she woke.

“We’re in New York,” Clint said before she could ask. She smiled slightly at him. She had been the one to teach the archer how to hide properly, and that sometimes plain sight was the best place to be.

“Any word?”

“News came in that a ‘scientific laboratory’ was raided in Russia and that dozens of scientists were killed. They aren’t naming us though.”

“If they claimed it was us, all sorts of people would be digging around for the truth in there. They could find plans, or videos of the torture, evidence.” Natasha noticed a black bag on the end of the bed and opened it. Inside she found her guns and holsters, knives, a shirt, pants, jacket, underclothes and socks. Glancing over at the door, she saw a pair of black boots. “You..” she looked over at the table.

“Steve dragged me to a store and we found some clothes for you,” Clint said, jerking his head at the blonde. She gave him a small smile.

“Thank you, Steve.”

“No problem.” She noticed that they all looked somewhat fresher. More alert, cleaner and tidy. Clint had found a gray tee shirt and his regular leather jacket to replace his bloodstained clothes.

“I’m going to shower.”

“I left your bag and the medkit in there,” Clint said. “Make sure to rebandage.” She nodded and swung her legs out of bed, hiding a grimace as she disappeared into the small bathroom. Along with the bag, a scrub brush and a bottle of conditioner sat on the counter. She smiled slightly to herself and turned on the water, taking off her clothes and bandages and stepping beneath the flow.

Clint stood and retrieved a glass of water as the heat of the shower brought the room temperature up.

“What do we do now?”

“We hunt them down and blow their facility off the face of the earth,” Tony suggested.

“Should they not have trial for their crimes?” Thor asked solemnly.

“No,” Tony replied, leaning back in his seat and giving no further explanation. The tiniest hint of a grin crossed the god’s face.

“I believe that decision to be correct., Stark.”

“Have you tried hacking into cameras to find it?” Tony gave him an ‘are you kidding me look.’

“I’ve gone through security cameras, cell phones, government documents and come up blank. These guys know how to bury themselves.”

“We’re assuming they stayed in Russia though. If someone like Natasha got out and knew my location, I sure as hell would move.” Tony said. Steve leaned forward on his elbows.

“The program is bringing in enough money to buy entire fake facilities, cover their tracks, hire thugs and travel without anyone knowing it. That much money has got to leave a trace.”

“Are they still running the same Black Widow program? A hired assassin is pretty pricey. With a ton of imprisoned, brainwashed assassins who work without pay, money wouldn’t be an issue.”

“They wouldn’t be running that same program after all of the Black Widows malfunctioned. It looks like they’ve moved on to trying to recreate Bucky. I’m guessing the ‘schematics’ were lost when they tried to blow me and Natasha up. They figured they’d have him to study, but now he’s AWAL and they’re working from scratch,” Steve said.

“Why would they want Natasha anyway? If they’ve discontinued the Black Widow program what’s the point?”

“They’ve probably kept genetic information from the previous girls and want to compare hers to see why she’s still sane. She’s also the only living person that knows him.” Clint glanced at Steve. “The new him.”

“How did that work anyway?”

“He was there before she was even born. They trained him, programmed his brain. Then he trained them. Natasha’s generation they didn’t mess so much with the brain like they did with him. They tried to fry his brain and make him a robot. But there were problems with them. They couldn’t understand sarcasm, figures of speech or gestures. It caused a lot of accidents and deaths. They decided to make the next ones more human, but they were out of control. So the next generation they tortured.” He was polishing and arrow as he spoke, twirling it between his fingers. The others stared, mesmerized. “Natasha had a few teachers, he was one of them.”

As he said it, the bathroom door clicked open. She looked much better, though that was probably because most of her wounds were covered by her clothes. Natasha was wearing a grey shirt and loose fitting black pants, her damp hair hanging around her shoulders.

“What are we talking about?”

“Bucky.” She restrained herself from rolling her eyes and knelt down in front of the mini fridge, grimacing slightly at the pain.

“And why are we talking about him?” She opened the fridge door and pulled out a protein bar and a bottle of water from their limited supplies.

“He could help us get in. He knows the most recent location of the Red Room, or at least where it was during the Hydra attack. That’s the best lead we’ve got,” Steve said. Natasha rose.

“How much of this is you wanting to get your best friend back, Rogers?” He glared at her.

“He could be useful.”

“He’s also dangerous. I don’t know if you remember, but he nearly killed you last time.”

“He saved my life.”

“He’s the one that put in it danger in the first place.”

“Why are you fighting me on this, Romanoff? If Clint had thought like you have, you wouldn’t be here either.” Her expression didn’t change, but she stiffened noticeably.

“You think you can win against him, Rogers? No shield?”

“Last time he was under Hydra’s control. Now he’s running.”

“You run when you’re scared, Rogers.” She said darkly, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “And fear can make people even more dangerous.”

“He’s not afraid of me.”

“Of course he’s afraid of you! He’s more afraid of you than he is of anyone.” The soldier looked crestfallen. “They changed him, Steve,” she said, her voice softer. “The only thing he knows is that you are a memory that haunts him. A memory he can’t remember. And you are the one that tore his life away from Hydra. Hydra was all he knew and now...he’s alone. And he’s scared, because he hasn’t been alone for decades. He’s been taking orders longer than I’ve been alive and you made him hesitate. You made him reconsider.” She opened the bottle of water and took several large gulps.

“Then what are we supposed to do?” Tony asked.

“I don’t know, Stark.” Natasha ran her fingers through her hair. “Dead people are alive and….” she shook her head. “They should be dead. I killed them and they’re…”

“Is it possible you didn’t kill them?”

“You said they gave you fake memories of your childhood,” Clint said slowly. “When they kidnapped you again, couldn’t they have planted more memories?” She bit her lip. “I killed Michael when I was twelve. They can’t implant fake memories that far back.”

“How?”

“I snapped his neck with my legs. Hands were tied.” Steve leaned forwards, resting his elbows on the table. “Steve?”

“We need to wind down,” the soldier muttered quietly. “Banner has been shaking since we got off the jet, Tony keeps falling asleep in his chair and passing it off as nothing...we need to sleep. And eat.”

“What about Hydra?” He turned to look at her, and Natasha saw tears of frustration threatening to fall.

“I know this is what you do. But the rest of us aren’t trained to stay up for days without sleep. I’m tired of talking about killing.” He stood, grabbing his jacket. “You’re good at your job, but knowing when to let the troops crash is my job,” he said, his voice channelling authority. “And for god’s sake, Natasha. You and Clint nearly died only a couple of hours ago. If you can’t tell yourself when to take a break, I will. You look like a dead woman walking, you shouldn’t even be out of bed. So lie down, take a nap and realize we’re your friends. You don’t have to act like a brick wall.” One by one the others filed out, until just she and Clint were in the room.

She laid back with her head against the pillow, staring at the ceiling. After a moment the mattress creaked and Clint lowered himself down beside her.

“We need to stop nearly dying.”

“I’ve been doing it my whole life,” she murmured, moving closer to lean her head against his chest. “I think I’d just get....bored.”

“Adrenaline junkie.” She snorted.

“Says you.”

“Touche.” They laid in silence for a moment, side by side, gazing up at the badly painted motel ceiling. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” She sighed, running her hand absentmindedly over his chest. “Clint, you know it doesn’t affect the way I think of you.”

“It doesn’t affect the way I think of you. I just…”

“I love you, Clint.” He smiled, the first genuine smile she had seen in awhile.

“I love you too, Tasha.” She pushed herself up on one arm, looking down at him.

“I mean it, Clint. It doesn’t change anything, okay? Not my feelings, not my actions, not your actions.” She bent down over him, her lips centimeters from his. “And when this is all over,” she whispered. “You and I are going to take a weekend away at your new loft and break in every room. Twice.” She kissed him softly.

“I like that idea.” She laid back down beside him and curled her back to face him. He molded himself perfectly to the outside of her, his arm draped across her waist. Despite the hotel lights and sun streaming in through the window, the two were asleep in minutes.

                                                            *

Natasha woke by grabbing Steve’s wrist and twisting it back as his hand moved to shake her awake.

“Ow, Natasha! Stop! It’s just me!” She opened one eye. He had been forced to his knees as she bent his hand. Natasha let go.

“Don’t wake me up like that.”

“Got it. Aye aye.” He shook his head in confusion and rose to his feet.

“I just came because Stark found a S.H.I.E.L.D doctor to check you two out. He’s in the next room.” Natasha and Clint stood grudgingly and followed the soldier into one of the other hotel rooms, complaining that they were perfectly fine. The doctor, who Natasha and Clint had worked with once before was standing near a bed. Without looking up from his medical kit, he spoke.

“Agent Barton first, as Agent Romanoff will take longer.” She scowled but Hawkeye just grinned at her.

“True.” He moved over to the doctor.

“Shut up and take off your clothes,” Natasha muttered. Steve left to join Thor, Tony, and Bruce in the next room as Natasha settled herself on the edge of the second bed.

“Why didn’t you call sooner?” Ryan knelt down to examine the stitched wound in Clint’s abdomen.

“We were in a bit of a rush.” The doctor sighed and took his injured arm, examining both the entrance and exit wounds.

“Doctor Banner did a pretty good job of stitching you up.”

“Well, when you’ve got a genius around and two people who get injured a lot, he learns how to treat them.”

“Concussion…” The doctor pressed fingers into his skin. “Dehydrated. Reduced strength in both your injured arm and leg. Range of movement severely limited by GSW to the abdomen,” Ryan muttered, more to himself then to either of them. While Clint wasn’t a fan of medical examinations, he sat patiently and did everything the doctor asked. The exam lasted another twenty minutes as Ryan poked and prodded, and cleaned and bandaged his wounds. When he was finished he packed some supplies into a black duffel bag.

“You should be inactive for another three weeks, Agent Barton, assuming you continue to use healing medication and care for your injuries.”

“We’re on a schedule here, doc. I don’t have three weeks.” Ryan narrowed his eyes and sighed, digging around in his bag.

“Vicodin, antibiotics and lots of liquids. Try not to do a lot of building jumping. Planted foot shooting will be best. Stretch out that arm before you use it,” he said, adding more things to the duffel. He handed the agent the bag and shooed him off. The partners switched places and Natasha kicked out of her pants and pulled the shirt over her head.

“I’m...not even going to ask,” Ryan sighed and began the same procedure, though he was more thorough this time. Black Widow was known by the S.H.I.E.L.D doctors as a very difficult patient who tended to hide injuries out of contempt for doctors.

Natasha remained still and calm as he checked the multitude of stitches on her back, all three of her bullet wounds, her broken ribs, arm, fingers and collarbone. He checked the worst of the bruising around her body before landing on her head. His fingers skimmed her bruised cheeks, the facial fracture and the cuts. His fingers tangled in her unbrushed hair, searching for bumps and cuts. “Normal agent I’d say 6 months inactive. Since it’s you, I’d say two.” He grimaced as his fingers found a particularly bad head wound. “Since you’re on the run, I’d say take the backseat, don’t run full speed, don’t hit with your broken arm. Keep everything bandaged and wrapped even if it hinders your ability to kill quickly.” He looked at Clint. “Change her bandages every 48 hours. Make sure she takes the antibiotics, ice her face, back of the head, ribs and any other bruises several times a day if possible. Lots of liquids, lots of calories, and as much rest as possible.”

“I’m sitting right here,” Natasha said, scowling.

“The last time I saw you alone you followed none of the instructions I gave you and hacked into the S.H.I.E.L.D database to change my report to say ‘cleared for active duty.’”

“I was fine.”

“If you were a normal non-genetically modified human, you’d likely be dead right now. Just be grateful I’m not bringing in more agents to take you away to a secure location and FORCE you to stay out of the action, whatever the hell you guys are up to.”

“I’d like to see you try.” They stared at each other for a minute and Ryan looked away.

“Just do it. You may be superhuman but you can still die. The worse off you are and the harder you push yourself the longer recovery will take. I’m assuming you still refuse to use pain medication?” She arched an eyebrow in response and he sighed, handing her another bag of supplies.

“Thanks, doc,” Clint said, rising to his feet.

“I’ll be having a word with doctor Banner about your care,” he called after them. “Don’t think I won’t!” Natasha rolled her eyes and shut the door behind them. They made their way to the next room and entered. The others were sitting around the table.

“You ordered pizza?” Natasha asked incredulously. “We’re on the run.” Clint set down his bag and grabbed a slice eagerly, completely at ease with their decisions.

“Sit, eat, drink,” he ordered, holding out a piece for her. She grumpily complied, perching on the edge of Hawkeye’s chair.

“Anybody have any brilliant ideas in their sleep?”

“I figured out a new design for my nuclear reactors to prevent--”

“Shut up, Stark.”

“You asked,” he retaliated, peeved that she had interrupted him.

“I meant about the current problem. Or can your nuclear reactors tell us where the Red Room is?”

“Natasha, is your face already healing?” Bruce cut off Tony’s retort.

“Hm?”

“The bruising looks lighter.” She ran her fingers absentmindedly over her cheek.

“That’s how the healing works. Bruises heal before other things because they’re more noticeable then, say, broken ribs. Also easier to heal. Deep bruising like this,” she motioned to the dark bruising on her jaw that had not lightened a bit. “Takes longer.”

“How long does a black eye last for you?” He said, leaning closer.

“Full on black eye? Four or five days. A small one just two or three.”

“A major black eye can last up to two weeks on the average human. That’s incredible.”

“Yeah, whatever,” she muttered, leaning back uncomfortably. Her hair fell around her face, hiding her bruised jaw.

“Sorry,” Bruce said. “I just get excited. It’s extremely advanced technology, do you know how many people could benefit from this sort of thing? Longer life spans, faster recovery, reduced chances of illness?”

“Growing pain so excruciating ten percent die in the process? Do you know how painful it is to fully develop a human brain in eleven years?” Doctor Banner shut his mouth and they continued on in silence after that, all eating and lost in their own thoughts.

“What if we don’t have to find them?” Steve asked suddenly.

“What’re you on about, Rogers?” Tony replied, raising his eyebrows.

“Once they locate us they’ll send people after us, right? Those people will have to have traveled here in some type of plane.”

“We just have to beat them, find their ride…” Sam said.

“And Bruce and I can trace their path,” Tony finished.

“Did our last attempt to let the enemy locate us end in near death?” Thor asked, pausing in devouring his seventh slice of pizza.

“Last time we let them take us,” Clint said. “This time we’ll fight.”

“We’ll have to have the higher ground.”

“Stark Towers,” Steve said.

“Hell no! Do you know how much damage I had to repair after New York? Leave my tower alone.”

“Didn’t you say it belonged to all of us?”

“But I’m still paying for it.”

“We can use a safe-house. Out in the country, isolated.”

“There’s still the problem of our gear. It’s all in the tower,” Bruce said.

“We stay here and rest for a few days. During that time we make randomized trips to the tower, taking only gear we can manage at a time.” Natasha rose from her seat. “Sound good, boys?” They all murmured their assent.

“It’s a plan.”

**  
***


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTICE: The italicized section at the end is not important to the plot, it is a flashback. Is has referenced past rape. If this will upset you, don't read it. It won't effect the rest of the story.
> 
> R&R!

CHAPTER 7

**  
  
**

Natasha sat in the passenger seat of an inconspicuous truck while Clint drove. They had decided to take separate paths to the safe house, in order to lessen the probability of being tracked there before they had time to set up. Clint and Natasha were driving, Falcon was flying, Steve was on a motorcycle, and the science bros were taking a flight to the nearest city and renting a car. Thor was taking the train. It had taken five days to get all their gear, pack it into the bed of the truck and devise a plan. Clint and Natasha had been excluded from the secret trips to Stark Towers. Instead, they stayed in their hotel room and rested. They both hated it and needed it. After a few days, Natasha was feeling quite refreshed and Clint was showing some improvement. Sam’s leg was healing quickly under Steve’s surprisingly gentle care, and overall the Avengers were well rested.

“What’s our ETA?”

“Seven hours,” Clint said, glancing at the dash. It may have looked like a junk old truck, but inside it was equipped with S.H.I.E.L.D. technology.

“What about the others?”

“Sam should get there before us, then Steve. We’ll get there third, then Thor, and Stark and Banner will get in last.” She nodded and kicked her feet up on the dash. He decided not to say anything.

“You ever miss the old days?” She asked suddenly.

“Hm?”

“When we killed terrorists and went to fancy parties.”

“I certainly miss seeing you in those cocktail dresses.” She punched him lightly in the shoulder, but he just grinned at her.

“Seriously.”

“Yeah, Tash. Of course I do. I don’t miss a lot of things, but I do miss some.”

“Tell me,” she said softly.

“I miss...Watching you make plans.” She quirked her eyebrow at him. “You get this look on your face, like you’re solving the hardest math problem in the world. And every so often there’s that little smile you get when you’ve done something right.”

“I’ve got a smile for that?”

“Oh yeah.” He tapped his fingers absentmindedly on the steering wheel. “You’ve got a bunch of smiles. Like the one you use when you’re seducing a target. Your mouth curves up on one side. You don’t use that one with me though.”

“Really?”

“No, that’s your fake smile. It’s the eyes, Tash. That smile is so charming no one bothers to look at your eyes. They’re cold, like when you put up your wall.” She frowned.

“I should work on that.”

“My smile, the one you use with me, it’s…” He furrowed his brow, searching for the right words. “Beautiful. You aren’t trying to seduce me, because I’m already in love with you every second of every day.” She lowered her gaze, a slight smile curving her lips. “It’s your safe smile. But you’ve got that small devious smile when you’re planning something.” He shook his head. “I’ve know a lot of spies, Tash, and I’ve known a lot of people who have felt pain beyond belief. And none of them do what they do with as much thrill as you feel. You were born for this, not just because of the Red Room.”

“Clint Barton, you are a man of many words.” She ruffled a hand through his hair.

“I have to make up for the fact that my partner speaks very little in public.” She rolled her eyes.

“I don’t have anything to say.”

“Oh, you have things to say.”

“Do I?”

“You just calculate the costs and benefits of speaking your mind, and decide that while people are idiots, it’s not worth getting in a fight over.” A grin spread across her face, which would seem like a very strange expression for anyone else who knew Natasha. Even Clint didn’t see it often.

“What are you, psychic?”

“Nope, I’ve just been with you for a very long time.”

“Shut up.”

“Never.” She shook her head with a smile and glanced out the window, watching the trees flash by.

“I miss being just the two of us.” He turned his head to look at her, but she continued to stare through the glass. “Even when we were always changing clothes and hair and names, I knew exactly who you were. It was just us.”

“You’re not very social, Natasha. And I don’t blame you. If I had been through..” He paused. “Well, I can understand, anyway. You’ve never been good at making friends.” She nodded, her back still facing him. “But that isn’t your life anymore.” Natasha turned.

“What?”

“You used to be about getting what you wanted from people and leaving them behind. You never had a relationship that lasted longer than a night.” Her eyebrows rose. “Hey, I’m not criticizing. It was what you needed. When you moved to America, you needed space and time to figure yourself out. You were handed freedom for the first time, and you were scared.”

“I wasn’t..”

“It took you a long time to trust me, even after I saved you. And once you did, I was your lifeline. You didn’t spend time with anyone else. And that was good,” he said quickly, seeing her expression. “I didn’t mind.” He took a deep breath, shrugging. “Being an Avenger has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever seen you go through. And considering what we’ve been through together, that’s saying something.”

“You think I don’t work well with them?”

“I think you don’t trust them. You haven’t had to put your life in anyone’s hands but mine, and suddenly you were expected to trust all these other guys. Superheroes who went against everything we know. They don’t hide their talent, they showcase it. It’s a spy’s hell. It took me a while too, and I haven’t got nearly as many trust issues as you.” Natasha gave him a death glare. “Because I don’t have nearly as many reasons not to trust people as you have.” This seemed to satisfy her slightly. “But I did grow to trust them.”

“I trust them,” she said defensively.

“No, you don’t. Not fully. And they know it, that’s why they walk on eggshells around you. That and they might be slightly scared of you.” She was quiet for a very long time.

“How do I trust someone?”

“There isn’t a specific...I don’t know. Gradually, you just realize you trust them. You’d feel confident putting your life in their hands.”

“Not very helpful.”

“You need to stop thinking about it as work, that they’re just other agents you’re collaborating with. They’re our friends.” She turned away from him again.

“It’s hard. Being on a team of men.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not the strongest person in the room anymore. If Tony had his suit and he wanted to hurt me, I wouldn’t beat him. Bruce, well, he could kill any one of us.”

“You’re really scared they’d hurt you? Your friends?”

“Not a lot of people having given me reason to believe otherwise.” He felt a sinking sensation in his stomach.

“Loki.” She turned back to him, and something in her eyes was pleading now.

“Clint, it’s not your fault. I just...What if it had been Tony? Or Thor? We’re two spies on a playing field full of aliens and superheroes.”

Clint stopped the car. They hadn’t seen anyone in over an hour on their tiny little road, so he felt fairly confident no one would mind.

“First, you are not the weakest person on this team. Take away the armour and the shield, you’d be fine. Second, we’re never going to let anything like Loki happen again. Third, you need to let your guard down. As long as you don’t trust them, they can’t trust you. And you’ll realize that these people, who you eat dinner with and watch movies with and save the world with, these people are your friends.” She took a deep breath and nodded.

“I know. I’ll try.” She pushed open her door and so did he. They switched places, Natasha scooting the seat forwards so she could reach the pedals. The engine roared to life and they set off again. Clint grabbed a jacket from the tiny backseat and balled it against the window, resting his head against it. “And you’ve got to stop with these gun-ho speeches of yours.”

“You love ‘em,” he murmured sleepily, flashing her a cheeky grin. Natasha rolled her eyes, a small smile forming on her lips.

                                                              *

The truck rolled to a stop and Clint opened his eyes, yawning.

“Why here?” He glanced first at Natasha, then at the farm before them. An old blue house, overgrown fields and a barn that had once been red stood before them.

“They’ll look everywhere before they look here.” His door opened and Clint’s boots crunched on the gravel as he hopped down. Natasha got out as well.

“Are you sure, Clint?”

“Nat, it’s got nothing for miles around, we’ll see them coming. It’s perfect.”

“Not for you.” He shrugged.

“We don’t always get what we want.” Together they walked up to the front steps, where Sam and Steve sat waiting.

“No way in,” Steve said.

“It’s S.H.I.E.L.D. Of course you couldn’t get in.” He stepped past them to the top stair, where he pulled open a secret compartment that was completely invisible from the outside. He tapped something into an electronic keypad and, with a loud grating noise, the door opened. “Through the living room and the kitchen, there’s a staircase to the bedrooms. There’s a bathroom up there too.”

“How do you know so much about this place, Clint?” Steve said, standing and pulling his bag over his shoulder.

“I grew up here.” Without another word, he entered the house.

By evening the Avengers were already hard at work fortifying their location. Tony had no trouble interfacing with the S.H.I.E.L.D. Technology to set up all sorts of alarms. Bruce was showing Sam how to make explosives while Steve rode the perimeter on his motorcycle, planting Stark’s motion detectors. Natasha was outside the house, testing every entrance for stability. The doors and windows were locked down tight, but she found a way into the basement. Tony quickly rebooted his portable repair device and melted a thick sheet of metal over the opening. Clint was in the kitchen, cooking. He pressed a finger to his ear.

“Dinner’s ready.”

“Ring the bell!” Stark said enthusiastically, referring to the old rusted bell Clint’s mother had used to call them in back in the day.

“I won’t.”

“Just do it.” He heard a muffled scraping sound on Tony’s end and a minute later Natasha appeared in the doorway, dragging him behind her. When they were all seated, Clint served big bowls of stew and bread before sitting beside Natasha.

“Where’d you learn to cook?” Tony asked through a mouthful of food.

“The circus,” Clint muttered, dipping his spoon in.

“Funny,” the billionaire replied.

“Not a joke.”

“You were in the circus?” Steve asked.

“Me and my brother, when we were kids.”

“What about your parents?” Natasha paused with her spoon halfway to her mouth, and looked at him. Clint glanced in her direction and shrugged.

“Dead.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve murmured.

“How’d they die?” Tony asked interestedly, earning a glare from Natasha.

“My father killed my mother, and my brother killed my father,” he said cooly. Everyone but him stopped eating.

“Why?”

“Clint, you don’t have to--” Natasha started to say, but he cut her off.

“It’s okay, Nat. We’ve read their files, it’s only fair they know stuff about us.”

“You’ve read our files?” Bruce asked.

“My dad was a drunk useless bastard who stabbed by mother to death. My older brother got the shotgun and filled him with lead when we found her.”

“I’m really sorry, Clint.”

“It was a long time ago.” He glanced at his partner, then at the rest of them. “I’ve got a new family now. Shut up and eat your food.”

“Do any spies NOT have a tragic backstory?” Tony asked bluntly.

“People with trust issues make the best spies,” Clint said. Natasha smirked into her stew.

“Your father killed your mother?” Bruce asked. They all looked at him. The doctor looked paler than usual. “My…”

“I’m sorry about your mother, Bruce,” Natasha said quietly.

“How do you--”

“I don’t work with anyone I hadn’t fully investigated,” she said, and there was a hint of an apology in her words.

“You became a brilliant scientist, I’m an archer. For two people with horrible murdering fathers, we turned out alright.”

“Except for the whole Hulk thing,” Bruce said, smiling slightly.

“From what I’ve read, that wasn’t really your fault.”

Thor banged his cup down on the table so loudly that Natasha jumped out of her chair.

“All this talk of death, yet we are fighting to stay alive,” Thor said. “This pain is gone.”

“It doesn’t just go away, Thor,” Bruce said.

“I too have lost my mother. I choose to remember her with joy.” Thor raised his glass.

“To parents.” They all raised their glasses, except for Natasha. Thor looked at her. “To loved ones.” She gave him a small smile and they all clinked glasses, feeling slightly silly because they were drinking water. When all the emotions had calmed down and they continued eating, the conversation turned to lighter things.

“I was thinking of setting us up with S.H.I.E.L.D,” Tony said.

“How do you mean?”

“Their intelligence system could alert us when there were disturbances to investigate or world domination quests to destroy.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. Tends to be a bit against the whole publicity thing. They might not like to be the employers of the Avengers.”

“Hell no, I don’t want to work for them. I want to work with them. They give us information and back us up if things go south, and I supply their scientists with cutting edge Stark technology.”

“You realize a lot of S.H.I.E.L.D. Is still collapsed. Clint and I might even be the only active agents. Most of the people there were intelligence agents, trained only in basic military defense. Then there’s the squad, and more than half of them turned out to be Hydra agents, who killed almost all of the good guys. There are a few levels of spies, the numbers decrease the higher and more talented they get.”

“Let me guess. You’re number one,” Stark said, groaning.

“Yes. Under Fury, and Maria. She’s his second in command. Then there’s the board, but they’re scattered all over the world and one was Hydra, another died.”

“How many spies are there left?”

“Only two Hydra operatives managed to hide among the spies. With the squad agents, they managed to kill nineteen. Mostly our youngest and most inexperienced.”

“There were only around a hundred of us to begin with. It takes a lot of time and energy and money to train just one. We lost 21 during the attack, but since then they’ve been hunting down agents. Going for the top ones. A spy against soldiers is one thing, but a spy against ten other equally matched spies is a death sentence. They killed 32, almost all high ranking. Seven of their partners dropped off the map to try and save themselves.”

“There’s only forty left?”

“Nat on the top, me and two others second rank, seven third ranks and the rest are the fresh agents.”

“So what your saying is, we don’t have backup,” Stark said slowly. “If things go bad..”

“We’re on our own.”

“Someone couldn’t have mentioned this sooner?”

“We figured you’d already hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D’s secure files and read about it yourself,” Natasha said.

“The KGB is huge.”

“I’d say we’re outnumbered by at least twenty five to one,” she said conversationally. “That’s not including whatever test subjects he’s got now.”

“Any idea what mutations we could be facing?”

“They’re trying to make Bucky. Probably have a few very strong and very fast brainless idiots.”

“Like zombies.”

“Zombies with a remote control,” she said grimly.

“Well this is all very pleasant,” Tony said, pushing out his chair and rising. “But for all we know, they could attack any minute. We should get some sleep.”

“Stark’s right,” Steve agreed, also standing. “I’ll take first watch.”

“I’ll be second,” Sam offered.

“Then me, then Bruce, then Thor. We’ll leave the superspies alone, they’ve still got to heal.” They all trudged up the stairs. Clint paused in the doorway to the downstairs bedroom, glancing at Natasha.

“You coming?”

“Give me a second,” she said, motioning for him to go inside. Clint shrugged and disappeared. “Steve, can I talk to you outside for a second?” The soldier paused in clearing the dishes and followed her out onto the porch. She sat down on the front steps and after a moment, so did her.

“What’s up, Romanoff?”

“I wanted to apologize.” His eyebrows shot up.

“Apologize?”

“For Bucky.” She saw his jaw tighten slightly. “I was too harsh with you, and I shouldn’t have...I knew a different Bucky then you did, and sometimes I forget that he was your partner. I know…” She sighed. “I couldn’t handle losing Clint. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been for you.”

“Thank you.” He combed a hand through his hair and gazed out into the darkness, at the faint outline of the barn in the distance. “I didn’t have time to mourn him, you know. I was frozen. When I woke up, decades had gone by but I was still stuck in the past. It was a long time ago but to me it was yesterday.” She nodded slowly. “I can still remember the look on his face when I…” He cleared his throat. “I couldn’t save him. And I thought he was dead, he should have been. That fall should have killed him.” Natasha remained silent. She wasn’t good with feelings, but she knew enough to know not to talk and just let him continue. “In a way I wish he had died. Instead of becoming this...Monster.” She flinched, but he didn’t notice. “There’s no way to get him back?”

“I...Don’t want to give you false hope, Rogers. Steve. Clint changed me when I was seventeen. It’s been over ninety years. A child’s brain is more adaptable to pain, it can handle more, but he was an adult when they got to him. My mind was fully functioning, his has been….Rewritten.”

Steve sighed and folded his hands in his lap, nodding.

“I just wish there was more I could do.”

“If we can, we will try everything we can to get him back. If we can’t…”

“It’d be kinder to kill him.”

“You don’t have to do it yourself.”

“But I do, don’t I?” She didn’t respond, so he turned to look at her. “Have you ever killed someone you loved? I know Clint...But was there anyone before that?”

“Yes. My first really intentional kill.”

“What happened?”

“We were eight, and they started weeding out the weak ones. They put us in the ring with one knife.”

“What was it like, doing that?”

“Horrible. Her blood was all over my hands. That was when I realized that maybe I deserved what they had done to me, that I was a monster.”

“You’re not--”

“I am, a little bit. I have done a lot of good with Clint. But I killed a lot of innocents before. That sort of red doesn’t wash away.”

“Even if Bucky came back, he wouldn’t be who he was,” Steve said dejectedly.

“No.” The soldier nodded, clenching his jaw tightly. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks, Natasha. Goodnight.” She rose gracefully and made her way inside, leaving the blonde to his thoughts. When she entered the room, Clint was already laying in bed.

“What’d you say to him?” She stuck a toothbrush in her mouth and brushed with one hand, removing her pants with the other. After she had rinsed her mouth in the sink, she turned to him.

“I talked about Bucky.” She crawled under the covers and molded her body to his side, resting her head on his shoulder.

“Did you let him down easy?”

“Yes.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek softly, then her lips.

“Good.” The archer snapped his fingers and the lights turned off, leaving the room in darkness. Natasha drifted off before him, leaving Clint staring up at the ceiling. He remembered bouncing on the bed as a child and lying next to his mother, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling. Other worse memories threatened to overtake him, so he pressed himself further against Natasha’s warmth and buried his face in her hair, letting the gentle sound of her breathing carry him off as well.

                                                          *

The next morning Natasha and Clint rose at five and relieved Thor from his post. They had slept enough, so they sat outside while the others recovered the hours they’d missed on guard. By eleven everyone was awake and Clint was serving platters of pancakes and sausages to the other guys. Natasha’s seat was empty, but he could hear her light feet on the old floorboards above. By the time she descended the stairs everyone was seated.

“Nice view,” she commented, sliding into her seat and snatching a pancake off Clint’s plate. He rolled his eyes and served himself another from the platter.

“It was.”

“You act like you’ve never been here before, Romanoff,” Steve said. “But I thought you would have.”

“Twice. Once when Clint was teaching me how to trust him. A lot of my memories before the Red Room kidnapped me again are still fuzzy. They tried to erase them.”

“And the second?”

“After Clint got me back, but I was only conscious for minutes at a time.”

“Do your missions ever not end in someone dying?” Clint groaned.

“Yes. I take the extra time to do some exploring,” Natasha said, grinning at Clint.

“She likes to shop.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have to buy so many new clothes…” She arched an eyebrow at him. Clint kicked her under the table.

“How about you take Pepper and both of you can stop dragging us along.” Natasha leaned back in her chair and stared him down.

“Oh, you boys love it. Changing rooms with mirrors on every wall...Dresses that are just a little bit--”

“Okay, fine,” Tony said uncomfortably. She smiled in triumph. Everyone but Thor looked uncomfortable.

“I do enjoy clothes shopping with Jane Foster,” he said jovially. Tony rolled his eyes and they all returned to eating in silence. When breakfast was finished, everyone went their separate ways to continue their personal preparation for the days to come. Clint stayed in the kitchen to clean the dishes, while Natasha sat on the counter next to him and refused to help. He just shook his head with a smile and focused on his task.

 

  _*_

_Natasha’s boots hit the gravel of the driveway as she stepped gracefully out of the truck. She stared around at the house, the barn, and the rolling green fields all around._

_“Where are we?”_

_“This is where I grew up.” Her eyebrows shot up and she took a second look. The blue house looked old yet new at the same time, as if it had recently been repaired. The barn doors were shut, but from the trenches in the dirt she imagined there was a least one tractor inside._

_“Why did you take me here?” She crossed her arms over her chest and glanced across the hood of the car to where Clint stood, one hand on his hip._

_“Because I want you to trust me more.”_

_“By meeting your parents? No thanks.”_

_“They’re dead. It’s just us.” She closed her mouth. “C’mon, Natasha.” He started walking, and she followed, albeit suspiciously. He opened a compartment in the front steps and tapped something in. The locks in the door disengaged and he pushed it open. The woman followed him inside, taking careful note of all the windows and possible exits. The place was inexplicably free of dust and cobwebs. In fact, it was perfectly clean._

_“What happened to your parents?”_

_“Let’s unpack the car,” Clint said, ignoring her question completely. She hissed in annoyance but retreated back outside and carried her bags inside. They were S.H.I.E.L.D. bags. She had the ability to buy her own, but felt that it was a stupid waste. Clint had taken it upon himself to force her into buying new ones, but she had resisted thus far._

_“Tell me.”_

_“You’re very impatient.”_

_“Clint, I’m in the middle of fucking nowhere for no goddamn reason except the fact that you want to BOND. You trust me to have your back, so why the hell are we here?”_

_“I trust you, that’s not the problem here.” She glared at him._

_“I trust you.”_

_“Right,” he said sarcastically, setting a crate of food on the kitchen table. “About as far as you can throw me.” He paused to rethink that. “Bad analogy, you can throw me pretty far. What I mean is that you don’t trust me enough.”_

_“I trust you to have my back.”_

_“You live with me but you avoid me at home.”_

_“I’m just busy,” she said defensively._

_“With what? Cleaning your knives? And stop throwing them at the walls, by the way, I’m getting tired of cleaning plaster off the floor.”_

_“What do you want, Clint? A home-cooked meal?”_

_“Good god, no. You’re a horrible cook. I just want you to open up to me. It’s one thing to trust my skills as a spy to help you out, but you’re about as emotionally attached as a brick wall.” Natasha sat down on the table and pulled an apple out of the crate, tossing it up into the air._

_“What happened to your parents?”_

_“I answer a question you answer one.” She narrowed her eyes but nodded in agreement. “My father killed my mom in a drunken stupor and my older brother shot him in the head. What happened to your parents?”_

_“I’m sorry about your mom.”_

_“What happened to your parents?” He repeated._

_“My uncle burned their house down with them inside. Why’d you become a spy?”_

_“I was in the circus as an orphan and I learned to shoot a bow. I started off freelancing and an agent brought me in.” He caught the apple she was tossing and took a bite. “Why do you hate Agent Trinn so much?”_

_“He reminds me of someone I knew. A Michael. How long have you been with the agency?”_

_“Four years. What did the person he reminds you of do to make you hate him so much?” She stiffened._

_“Ask something else.”_

_“No.”_

_“Clint.” He raised his hands frustratedly._

_“You don’t trust me! How am I supposed to put my life in your hands when you don’t trust me?”_

_“He took my virginity.” Clint’s expression changed several times in the course of a few seconds, but eventually settled on confusion._

_“Wha?”_

_“Forcefully.” He put his face in his hands._

_“Natasha…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”_

_“Where’s your brother now?” He raised his head, but her expression was unreadable._

_“Uh...I don’t know. He dropped off the map.” She stared at him expectantly. “You know it doesn’t count if it’s rape.”_

_“Then I’m the world’s most experienced virgin. You’re a spy and you can’t track down one guy?”_

_“I think he’s dead. If he isn’t, he’s not in general society. Probably homeless. How many times?”_

_“I don’t know.”_

_“You don’t know?”_

_“I gave up counting after about a thousand.”_

_“For god’s sakes, you’re…You’re so young! Is everyone at the KGB a fucking psychopath?”_

_“Yes,” she said without pause. “And I’m not that much younger than you.”_

_“I still haven’t been raped over a thousand times.”_

_“I don’t want to talk about it. Do you want to know if your brother is alive?”_

_“I don’t know.”_

_“Why do I live with you?”_

_“You’re the youngest agent S.H.I.E.L.D. has ever had, and given your…History, they don’t want you living alone.” She tilted her head at him._

_“Do you think I’m a bad person?”_

_“No. I never have, or I wouldn’t have brought you in. The more I learn about you, the more I realize you’re innocent.”_

_“Why would you agree to a permanent partnership with a previously enemy spy after only a few days?”_

_“Because I knew you were a good person, and I wasn’t going to wait around and have some other agent nab you. Given your credentials and your S.H.I.E.L.D. scores…Well, you’re the best there is. Literally.” She shrugged and pulled out another apple, taking a bite before he could swipe it away from her._

_“How long are we stuck here?”_

_“Fury gave us five day’s leave.” She groaned and laid back across the smooth oak table.  “How’s that shoulder doing?”_

_“It’s fine,” she muttered, rolling onto her stomach and resting her chin on the table. “What is there to do around here?” Clint glanced at his watch._

_“I should check on it.” He gestured for her to sit up and moved over to the sink, scrubbing his hands under a stream of water. “Board games, cable. I can teach you how to drive a tractor. There’s a town not far, they’ve got a bar.” Natasha sat up reluctantly and unzipped her jacket. He was not at all surprised to find that aside from the gun at her hip, she had strapped two more at her sides. Clint dried his hands as she tugged her t-shirt up and over her head._

_“You and I need to discuss the definition of ‘fine’” he said calmly, snapping on a pair of gloves and peeling away the blood-soaked bandage. She had been stabbed in the shoulder on their previous mission, and had apparently not been observing her medical promises. “You pulled a stitch. How?”_

_“How am I supposed to know?”_

_“Oh, you know. Generally there’s the painful sensation of tearing your skin and muscles to remind you.” He set about cleaning the wound, which was looking impressively healed for something she had only gotten a few days previously. Natasha leaned back on her hands and yawned, seeming perfectly at ease. Truth be told, he had already seen her naked on multiple occasions, most of which involved near death experiences. All, actually._

__

_Later that evening Natasha was laying spread eagled on the king bed in the downstairs bedroom, staring at the ceiling. She was sure if she watched any more television her brain would melt into mush. Clint came out of the bathroom and flopped down beside her, his hair still wet from the shower._

_“Was this your parent’s room?”_

_“Yeah.” He rolled onto his back so they were both staring at the crack in the ceiling._

_“Was your mom nice?”_

_“My mom was great. She died when I was ten, though. In the circus it’s all just one big family. Every woman acted like my mother, every man my father and every boy my brother. It was great.”_

_“Why’d you leave?”_

_“I liked to shoot, not perform. They knew that it wasn’t the life for me, so they let me leave.”_

_“Family. What’s it like?”_

_“It’s like having people to care for you and look out for you, to teach you and learn from you. People that annoy you but that you also love.”_

_“Sounds complicated.” He chuckled. She rolled onto her side to face him and he turned as well. Natasha’s long red hair pooled on the sheets between them. She complained about it all the time, but never cut it. “What was your father like?”_

_“Just your general abusive asshole.”_

_“General abusive assholes to me are experienced torturers.”_

_“Right. He was just….He beat my mom. Not like what we do, but he hit her and pushed her around. My brother and me too.”_

_“Why’d she stay?”_

_“She was scared of him. She didn’t think she was strong enough to get my brother and me away with her, and she knew if she left us he’d kill us.” Natasha nodded._

_“I’m sorry.”_

_“You’ve got a scar on your stomach that wasn’t from torture or a fight. It’s from surgery.”_

_She raised an eyebrow. “Did you...have a kid?”_

_“No,” Natasha said stiffly. They stared at each other for a second. Clint tugged down the collar of his t-shirt to reveal a small round scar._

_“He was a smoker. Started putting the cigarettes out on me when I was four.”_

_“They…” She cleared her throat. “They sterilized me. Removed my ovaries and uterus. That way they didn’t have to worry about using protection or if my mark would.” He scooted closer to her and she laid her head on his chest instinctively._

_“Natasha?”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“You don’t have to be alone.”_

_**  
*** _


	8. Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

  
  


The longer they were at the farm, the more unsettled the Avengers grew. There was no way to relax knowing that the enemy could swoop down and attack at any minute. Clint had been avoiding everyone, spending most of his time on the roof of the house or the barn. Steve and Sam kept going off on their own to ‘walk’ but the others suspected it wasn’t walking they were doing. Bruce was preoccupied with his laptop. He sat on the sofa most hours of the day, calculating chemical equations and balancing them. He said it was like a mind puzzle, and it helped to clear his head. Tony was stuck out in the barn using old scrap metal and tools to design something none of the others recognized. No one had even seen Natasha all day. In fact, Thor was the only Avenger who seemed entirely at ease. He was having a great time learning how to chop wood, venturing onto other farmland to examine the animals and belting Asgardian songs at the top of his voice. None of the others had the heart or willpower to tell him to shut up.

“Yo, Clint,” Steve was standing on the ground, looking up at the Archer where he was hunched on the roof.

“What?”

“Natasha’s been gone all day, do you know where she went?” His brow furrowed.

“I didn’t see her leave.”

“She was gone when I woke up.”

“I thought she was with you…” He jumped off the edge of the roof and landed softly in the dirt a few feet from the soldier. “She could have gone into town.”

“Why would she do that?” The spy crossed his arms over his chest and considered the question. There wasn’t much to do in town, and Natasha wouldn’t be drinking with the impending attack. She didn’t like grocery shopping.

“Did she take the car?”

“Car? The truck is here.”

“In the barn.” They glanced at each other and took off running towards the barn, where Tony was situated underneath the tractor. The old convertible was gone. “Did you move the car, Tony?”

“Car?”

“Nevermind.” Clint pulled out his earpiece and activated it. “Nat?”

“Yes, Clint?”

“Where are you?”

“In town.”

“What are you doing?”

“Just buying bandages.” He scowled.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Fine, I’m at the clinic.”

“Why is she at the clinic?” Steve asked, having activated his communication device as well. Clint looked over to see Stark watching them, his device on.

“That’s why I lied,” she said scathingly. “It’s fine, Rogers, don’t worry about it.”

“When you say not to worry about something it’s generally wise to worry more.”

“Clint, this damn car broke down, would you come pick me up?”

“I’m coming!” Steve said.

“Me too!” Tony yelled.

“Where is it that we are going?” Thor appeared around the corner. “And will there be food?”

“No one else is coming other than Clint. He’s just going to pick me up and be right back, okay?”

“I want to see the town.”

“Next time.”

“I have the keys to the car and I’m not giving them up unless we can come,” the captain said stubbornly.

“Clint, punch Rogers in the face, would you?”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He turned off his device, and the others followed suit. “Fine, but you guys are riding in the bed of the truck.”

 

                                                            *

They rolled into town a few minutes later. It was indeed tiny. The streets were dirt, and downtown consisted of a drug store, gas station, bar, supermarket and a clinic. The sign by the clinic said that the nearest hospital was twenty miles down the road. Clint pulled up in front of the building and hopped out, jogging around to the front door. The others trailed after him, looking around with varying degrees of disappointment. Thor looked enchanted. 

“May I help you?” The woman at the front desk lowered her glasses. “Oh, Steward, it’s been so long!” Before any of them knew what was happening the old woman was pulling Clint into a tight embrace. “I was worried you’d forgotten about the old farm, dear.”

“How could I?” 

“Oh, always a sweet one,” she said, patting his cheek lightly. “Are you here for a checkup, dear?”

“Actually, no, my girlfriend is here. Red head.” The old lady nodded understandingly.

“Poor thing. Stephanie?”

“Yes, that’s her.”

“Here, let me take you to her room. The others will have to wait here, dear.”

“Yes ma’am,” Clint said, shooting a look at Steve, Tony and Thor. The three of them sat as one on the bench and Mrs. Stevenson led him back into the building.

“It’s been awhile since we’ve seen anyone in like her. That sort doesn’t happen out in these parts. Where were you, dear?”

“We were in the city,” he said casually. They stopped in front of a door. The peeling label read “Exam room 5.”

“You know, I’ve got a packet around here somewhere…”

“I don’t think she’ll be needing it,” he said impatiently, glancing at the door. “She’s not a pamphlet person.”

“Very well dear.” The old woman knocked three times and opened the door just wide enough for him to slip inside. Natasha was laying on the table, her arms crossed over her chest and a very dissatisfied expression on her face.

“I thought I said pick me up, not burst into my exam room.”

“Shut up.” He grabbed the nearest stool and pulled it up to sit by her head. “Why’ve you been gone so long?”

“The doctor was a man.” 

“Ah.”

“Apparently their nearest female doctor lives several hours away, but I said I’d wait.”

“You know Stark’s medical supplies probably includes a much faster and easier way to do it.”

“Yeah, but then I’d have to explain to him why I needed to use his supplies.”

“Or you could just knock him out and replace everything before he woke up.”

“I wish,” she muttered, shifting slightly.

“Where’s the doc?”

“She went back to run some tests. In this dump, who knows how long that could take.”

“Hey, this is where I got all of my tests when I was a kid. I broke my arm falling out of that tree, all of my shots…”

“And you turned out so well.”

“Hey!” She cracked a rare smile.

“Kidding. You’re perfect.” He leaned over and kissed her gently. “But seriously, Clint, give me a bit here okay? We could use some groceries anyway.”

“I’ll be back in twenty.”

 

                                                           *

“What’s Natasha doing?” Steve asked. They had crossed the street and entered the supermarket. Thor was pushing a grocery cart with a childish grin on his face.

“It’s good to get things like stitches and broken bones checked out, especially if you’re like Natasha. She doesn’t really notice when she pulls a stitch or jostles something.”

“And it’s really sanitary here?” Tony asked, wrinkling his nose. 

“Just because you’re a billionaire genius doesn’t mean regular people can’t be clean too,” Clint said, annoyed. Thor pulled a box of cookies off the shelf and set them in the cart.

“Oh, and you’re telling me Natasha isn’t rich?”

“Of course she is. But she’s not a prude, like you.” Tony scowled and grabbed a few boxes of pasta.

“How much money do you guys make, anyway?”

“You don’t want to know,” Clint said. 

“C’mon.”

“A lot. But we also pay for things like clothes, and when you’re attending fancy parties and getting shot all the time that sucks up a lot of dough.” Clint peered around at the shelves and retrieved a few cans of tomato sauce. “There is the advantage of being able to take everything from the mark. Nat is really good at hacking bank accounts.”

“So why is it that I pay for everything?” Tony said, annoyed.

“Dirty money,” Clint pointed out, snatching a few more items. “Your money is clean, relatively. If we started using our money to pay for things, people would ask questions.”

“Everything’s on the internet now, though, why does it matter?”

“Everything? Come on, Stark. Sure, the information was out there until Natasha found a computer and encrypted the important stuff. And of course, SHIELD has secrets that weren’t kept in electronic form.”

“Sneaky bastards.”

“We’re spies, Tony.” They reached the produce section and Clint started throwing things into the cart, barely even looking at them as he did so. 

“So why aren’t you getting a check-up?” Steve asked, examining a bundle of carrots.

“Unlike Natasha, I know how to take care of myself and take it easy.”

“Yeah, jumping off rooftops is taking it easy?”

“If you know your injuries and your body, finding a balance is easy enough. Taking the impact more where you can handle it. Natasha’s used to using all of her muscles all of the time.”

“Maybe she should teach us yoga.”

“Yoga isn’t her forte,” Clint snorted. “She can do it, sure. We had this yoga class a while back with the spies, she spent the whole time complaining. Ruined the experience for everyone and made the yoga instructor cry.” 

“That just seems ill-spirited,” Thor said. “What is this and can we buy it?” Thor said, pointing at a stuffed teddy bear holding a red heart.

“No,” Clint replied, pushing the cart onward. 

“Maybe I should bring Sam down here to get that bullet wound in his leg checked out,” Steve said.

“If he’s a normal person, he shouldn’t be having trouble. But if it makes you feel better, sure.”

“So why do you think they haven’t shown up yet?” Bruce asked, peering at the label on a cheesecake. 

“If you were trying to hide, why would you come out into the middle of nowhere where no one would notice if you vanished? And I generally try to avoid coming here at all costs,” Clint said. 

“I thought these guys were smart, shouldn’t they have figured it out by now?”

“Dunno. They don’t know me as well as they know Natasha, and it still confuses them that she works with a team and a partner. They’ll probably check all the places she would go if she were alone before trying here.”

“That’s stupid,” Tony muttered.

“They taught her to work alone, they think very highly of themselves,” Clint said, shrugging. He had been slowly making his way to checkout, where Thor enthusiastically unloaded the grocery cart.

“Steward! It’s been awhile, yeah?” The cashier set down his magazine and started scanning their items. He looked to be about Clint’s age, with black hair and a goatee. 

“Yeah. How’s the wife, Stan?”

“Pregnant with our third kid,” he said smugly. “What about you?”

“Huh?”

“C’mon, fella like you ought to have a lady.”

“Oh, yeah,” Clint said, pulling out his wallet.

“So?” The cashier asked persistently. 

“Yeah. Stephanie, redhead.”

“Knew it!” Stan set a couple of bags in the cart. “Saw her going into the clinic. So, ya gonna have some kids of your own, yeah?”

“What? No,” he said quickly. 

“104.48 will be your total,” Stan said. “And never? C’mon, all women want kids.” Clint handed him a couple of bills. 

“Not this one.” Stan shrugged and opened the cash register, pulling out his change. 

“She’ll change her mind. Here you are,” he said, handing over the money.

“Doubt it,” Clint muttered under his breath, grabbing hold of the cart and steering it toward the door. The rest of them followed Clint outside. 

“How come everyone here calls you Steward?”

“That was my name as a kid.”

“What? Clint’s not your real name?”

“They renamed me when I joined the circus.” He grabbed a few bags out of the cart. “You’ll find that most spies don’t go by their original names. Like Natasha, her name was Natalia.”

“You know, it makes it kinda hard to trust you when you say things like that,” Steve said. They crossed the road and Clint set the bags in the back of the trunk.

“I haven’t gone by Steward for a long time. That kid is dead.” 

“Comforting.”

“Stay here, I’ll only be a minute,” the archer said, motioning to the car. They climbed in the back reluctantly, and he could feel their eyes on the back of his head all the way into the clinic.

“Stephanie?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” she said, appearing from behind the counter with a thin file.

“What’s it say?”

“I haven’t looked yet. Let’s get out of here, I hate these places.” Clint shot an apologetic look at the receptionist and grabbed Natasha’s elbow, steering her out onto the street. She got into the truck silently. “I thought I said only you should come.”

“And when have you known these idiots to listen?”

“Hey, we can still hear you back here,” Steve said.

“I know,” Clint muttered, pulling out onto the road. He made a U-turn and headed back the way they had come. 

“You bought a lot of food, considering they could show up any day now.”

“Have you seen how much Thor eats? We’ll breeze through it,” the archer said, tapping his thumb against the steering wheel.

“Are you at all worried that the house might be damaged during the fight?” She asked.

“Oh c’mon, Nat. Things blow up around us all the time, I’ve learned not to become attached.” He looked over at her. “Except to you.” 

“Sweet talk like that,” she said, her lips curving into something of a smile. He just grinned and turned on the radio, tuning in on a country music station. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered. “You don’t actually like this shit, do you?”

“No, but it drives Stark crazy,” Clint grinned turning up the volume. She glanced back to see Tony glaring at the back of her partner’s head. She turned back to face the front.

“Useful information, I’ll store that away for later.” She leaned back in her seat, kicking her feet up on the dash. It wasn’t particularly comfortable given her injuries, but was more of a habit than anything. They rode the rest of the way to horrendous music and Tony’s insults.

 

                                                                  *

That night, they all sat around the tv together like they would back home. It had been a long few weeks for the Avengers, and they had been left questioning everything. Still, even through their fights, tantrums and breakdowns they had survived. Tony fell asleep with his head on Bruce’s shoulder. The scientist held a tablet, and was half watching the movie half performing some type of virtual experiment. Clint was sitting in an armchair with Natasha draped across his lap while Thor, Sam and Steve crowded on the couch. For once, everything seemed normal.

Later that night, Clint and Natasha were in the kitchen washing dishes. Or rather, he was washing dishes while she sat on the counter and ate mint ice cream from the container. 

“So, what did your results say?” He asked, drying a cup and setting it on the counter.

“The usual.”

“Nat, seriously?” She shrugged at him.

“Weight is down, I’m low on iron and calcium, I have an infection on my back, but it’s nothing antibiotics won’t fix.”

“I bet you could make a dead guy sound fine. You’re avoiding all the broken bones and stitches.”

“You already know about those.”

“I don’t know what the doctor said about them.”

“Clint,” she said softly, lowering the ice cream. “My file said exactly what you’d expect it to say. The doctors say exactly what you’d expect them to say, and I, as always, will ignore them.” He raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you and I both know I heal much faster than an average human. They don’t know that, which makes their reports inaccurate.” 

“So an infected wound? That’s it?”

“Technically several infected wounds, but it’s practically the same thing. Basically, I’ll be fine.” She leaned over and pecked him on the lips.

“You’re always fine in the end, it’s the in between fine part that I don’t like.”

“Grow up. You’re a big boy, Barton.” She ruffled his hair affectionately. “And you know that you’d much rather have to worry about me than be in a relationship with a boring civilian. People that don’t take crazy risks and kill people are just so boring,” she said, grinning.

“You’re right. But just because you’re perfect for me doesn’t mean you’re not a pain in the ass,” Clint said.

“Right back atcha, sweetheart,” she said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. They washed/ate in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the sounds of Thor battling Steve on xbox. 

“How do you think they’re doing?” He asked.

“Tony misses Pepper, but he knows he doesn’t want to drag her into all of this. Thor misses Jane. Steve and Sam seem fine, Bruce has Tony.” She yawned and hopped up, stuffing the ice cream back in the freezer. “They’re going to be alright.”

“Yeah, you think so?” He set the last of the plates back in the cabinet and wiped his hands, turning to her.

“Of course. What other group of idiots is going to save the world?”

 

                                              The ground shook.

                                                            *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the break from action, it's not for long! Please R&R!


	9. Note

Hey guys, I'm so sorry it's been so long since posting! It was holiday month and now it's exam months! I PROMISE to post a fantastic chapter as soon as my midterms are over!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please read and review!

CHAPTER 9

 

It took the Avengers a minute to react. In that time the videogame was turned off, they grabbed their weapons, put their com links in and headed to their designated places. They had discussed earlier where each of them should be, given their various skills and injuries. Clint was on the roof, using the tall chimney as cover. Sam and Tony were in the sky, Steve and Natasha were out by the barn and Thor was standing on the front steps of the house. Bruce was hiding in the woods, doing his best not to Hulk out. They were fighting on their own turf and didn’t need him going on a rampage. He didn’t mind. Bruce didn’t like to fight, and he didn’t like the Hulk.

“What’s it look like up there?” Steve said.

“Three jets coming in hot. I say we destroy two, we only need one to get the location,” Tony replied. “They’re dropping people.”

“We see them,” Clint muttered, his arrows flying. The dark figures crept across the grass, keeping low to avoid being seen. They split in half, some heading toward the barn and the others making a beeline for the house. In the sky, Sam and Tony were engaging the ships.

“Rogers, watch your back,” Natasha said, just in time. He ducked, missing the blow intended for him and allowing her the opportunity to shoot the opponent dead. 

“Thanks.”

“No problem. Keep your eyes open, I’m going to circle round the other side.” He nodded, though in the dark it was hard to see. She moved quickly and quietly over the gravel, her shoes barely making a noise. She had just rounded the corner when a man flew out of the darkness. His fist connected with her face and she kicked out, catching his knee. The man yelped and drew back for another hit, which she ducked. 

“How’re you doing, Steve?” She threw the man over her shoulder and he landed hard. He didn’t get up in time to avoid her foot slamming down on his face, breaking his neck with a resounding snap.

“I’ve got company,” his voice said in her ear. She slid beneath the next soldier’s attack and slammed her fist into the back of his head. The sound of her bullet going through his skull was thankfully small, due to the silencer.

“How many you got?” Yet another opponent charged at her, this one holding a knife. She ducked and dodged, dancing around him while he grew increasingly frustrated with her. Eventually he made a mistake, extended too far, and she pulled him off balance. The fight was over in an instant.

“I don’t know, it’s dark,” he replied.

“How are the rest of you doing?” She asked, scanning what little of her surroundings she could make out. 

“Nat, watch out!” Clint’s warning came just in time. She barely had time to distance herself from the grenade before it exploded. She was thrown through the wooden wall behind her, hit the ancient tractor and fell to the hay strewn ground.

“Thanks for the warning,” she coughed, waving a hand in front of her face as the smoke dissipated. 

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She picked herself up slowly and promptly fell back to the ground as she rolled. The knife embedded itself in the ground where she had been just seconds before. “Stark?”

“Every time we get close they fire their weapons at us,” he yelled. “My suit’s power is going down. We got one of the ships, but the other two--” he was interrupted by another startling bang from above. “Son of a…”

“Sam!” Steve yelled from outside. She looked just in time to see the man plummet from the sky, his wings slowing the fall only marginally. Steve was running before he hit the ground.

“Steve, goddammit get back here!” She yelled hoarsely, firing several shots at the soldiers pouring through the doorway and the hole in the wall on either side of her. Suddenly she found herself surrounded. Her backup had run off, leaving her to deal with both his and her opponents. She could hear Sam’s moans of pain in her ear as they converged on her.

 

Steve barely heard Natasha’s voice as he ran. All he could see was Sam falling from the sky and the sickening crunch amplified by their connection.

“Shit!” Tony was yelling. “Steve--”

“I got him, stay up there,” the captain panted. He fell to his knees and slid the rest of the way to Samuel, who was lying face down with his metal wings spread on either side of him. “Sam. Sam!” He rolled him over. 

“Steve…”

“Sam, talk to me. You’re okay, okay? Where’s Banner?” He looked around, as if the scientist would appear magically. Bruce was immersed in his music far away, unable to come to their aide. “What’s hurt? Sam?” His voice was high with anxiety.

“Shhh,” the Falcon muttered. “You’re hurting my ears.”

“Right.” He pulled the com link out of his partner’s ear and started assessing him for damage. He couldn’t see anything in the dark. “You have to tell me what’s wrong. How do I fix this? Sammy, talk to me!”

“My chest…” the other man mumbled. 

“What happened? No, don’t talk. Tony, what happened?”

“The copilot stuck his gun out the window and caught him in the chest. The wing’s vest should have helped…” Steve was already fumbling to remove the metal vice from around Sam’s chest. The wings retracted, squeaking in protest, and Steve leaned in to get a better look.

“It looks like the bullet didn’t get that deep,” relief flooded through his voice. 

“He still fell,” Tony reminded him breathlessly. Up above Steve could see sparks as bullets hit Tony’s armor. 

“Sam, what’d you hurt in the fall?”

“My leg...and my ribs.” 

“Which leg, where?”

“Ankle below the bullet,” Sam said through gritted teeth. Steve carefully rolled up the ankle and his fingers skimmed the darker man’s leg. 

“Okay, okay we can fix this,” he said. “It’s not that bad, it’s okay.”

“Stop freaking out,” Sam muttered.

“Sorry. Thor, how’re you holding up the house?”

“Take him to the basement,” the God replied. “He will be safest there.” Steve didn’t have to be told twice. He scooped his partner up and started sprinting, trying to ignore Sam’s groans as the bumpy ride jostled him. Thor had moved the battle back onto the ground and away from the porch, giving Steve a window to slip inside. Bullets tore up the door as he slammed it shut behind him.

 

The house was dark. They didn’t need to make it easier to see by having the lights on. Steve, unfamiliar with the house, fumbled around for several seconds before finding the door to the basement. He shut it behind himself and descended the stairs two at a time. At the bottom a long chain hung down from the ceiling, which he pulled. The lights came on and he was able to set Sam on the old couch in the corner. Aside from being covered in dirt and blood, Sam looked simply exhausted. Steve pulled the wings the rest of the way off of him and set them on the ground.

“How’s the chest?”

“You were a medic too, right? What do I do?” Steve stood, retrieved the med kit and returned to the couch. 

“Barely. I was...barely a medic.” Sam coughed, dark blood staining his lips. Steve pulled out a knife and got to work cutting the shirt away. The bullet had hit the right side of his chest, undoubtedly puncturing his lung. 

“Damn,” Steve muttered. “Can you breathe?”

“Not really. But the ribs...ah!” He cried out as Steve probed said ribs.

“Sorry, sorry, I’ve just gotta figure out what’s wrong with you.”

“You gotta...reinflate the lung.”

“How do I do that?”

“Find the biggest...needle in there.” Steve rummaged around in the bag, tossing items out in his search before producing a rather intimidating needle. “Put it in, pull...the plunger out. Remember you only want to...puncture the top, not the bottom too.” 

“I don’t know what that means!”

“Just do it.” Steve swabbed at the bloody skin with something he assumed was sterilizing, and jammed the needle into Sam’s chest. Air hissed as he pulled the plunger and he watched in relief as his chest rose. 

“What do I do now?”

“You gotta...figure out which ribs are broken.” Steve glanced down.

“I can’t tell.”

“Push on them until it hurts,” Sam growled. Steve did so, wincing each time Sam did. 

“These two…” he tapped the fifth and sixth ribs on his left side. “And this one.” He tapped the fifth on his right. Sam nodded. “Is that good?”

“They’re not false, which...lowers the chances of a piece breaking off and damaging my other organs.”

“What about the fall?”

“The wings slowed me, it wasn’t that far….I don’t know.” Steve moved down to examine the break. Just above his ankle was swollen and bruising badly.

“I don’t know how to reset a bone.” Sam groaned.

“Find the break with your fingers. Is it all the way?”

“It’s not sticking out of your leg.”

“Take the ankle and give a sharp pull. If I’m lucky...that’ll do it.”

“If you aren’t lucky?”

“My bone will heal wrong,” he muttered grimly, closing his eyes. Steve stood, took Sam’s foot in both of his hands and pulled. His yell of pain made the soldier cringe.

“I’m sorry.”

“Nah...nah, it’s cool,” Sam growled. “I need to ice it before you wrap it or the swelling...could cut off my circulation.”

“Right.” Steve jogged over to the ancient freezer in the corner and opened it, peering inside. After some deliberation he pulled out two ice packs and returned, stacking them over the leg.

“What do I do now?”

“Find the damn morphine.” That task only took a few seconds; Steve had noticed it earlier and set it aside. He bit off the cap and took Sam’s arm, injecting the liquid into his bloodstream. The Falcon sighed, his muscles relaxing as the drug took its effect. 

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

 

The other Avengers weren’t faring so well either. Thor was leaping from the tops of the planes and back to the ground, trying to help Tony. Tony’s suit, and consequently Tony himself, was taking a beating. One of the arms of the suit had been damaged so badly that a chunk had fallen away, and one of the other pieces had imbedded itself in his upper arm. Hot blood turned almost immediately cold as it spilled from the wound, and Tony found himself vaguely wondering how he was going to get the chunk of metal out without damaging something badly. Those on the ground had finally made it up to the roof, where Clint was forced to engage them in hand to hand combat as his bow was thrown several yards away. In the absence of his arrows, more enemy soldiers were able to enter the barn and flood toward the house. Natasha’s com link had fizzed out with a screech that made all of them cringe.

“Ready?” Tony asked. Before they could inquire, one of the two remaining ships exploded and their ears were filled with Tony’s satisfied yells.

“Now kick the pilot out of the other one and land that thing,” Clint yelled, pulling himself up from the edge of the roof yet again. 

“Thor, how you doing?”

“It seems that they are no longer coming. Are opponents are those we already see.”

“Good, my arms are getting tired,” the archer growled, tossing a limp body off the edge of the roof only to be tackled by another. “Rogers?”

“Sam’s doing better, he’s unconscious now.”

“And you can’t leave him?”

“No, too dangerous.”

“Tony, can you get eyes on Tasha? With that heat signature thing?”

“JARVIS doesn’t have enough power,” the billionaire replied. Up above, he was shoving the pilot out of his seat. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

“You’re just saying that to get me to shut up.”

“True, but it still stands. I’ve got the ship. Clint and Thor, get away from the house and I can take them all out from up here.” Thor leapt into the air and right into the cockpit while Clint sprinted for his bow. He reached it, picked it up and fired. Without waiting to see if the grappling hook had connected, he jumped. Stark started firing the semi-automatic rifle, guided by Jarvis, and the soldiers dropped like flies. Clint his the ground hard and skidded to a halt. He pressed a button and the hook retracted from the hole it had created in the barn wall.

“Tash?” He crept inside, peering around. Tony’s triumphant yelling filled his ear so he found the light switch and flicked it on. Natasha was standing amidst a pile of bodies, facing away from him. “Tasha.” She sighed and turned around, stepping over the dead.

“I didn’t want to be this person again.”

“Nat, they were trying to hurt you.” She just shook her head.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, he muttered, holding out his hand. She took it. “Are you?”

“Yeah,” she replied. They walked in silence back to the house. It was odd. In the absence of screams, yells, bullets and fighting, the night seemed abnormally quiet. They met the others at the stairs, opened up the door and went inside. Tony contacted Bruce and told him to come back now that the fight was over. They all made their way down the stairs and into the basement. Sam was asleep on the couch and Steve was sitting against the wall, looking tired. 

“Your arm,” he said, looking up at Tony.

“Yeah.” Natasha pushed Tony into a chair and took a better look at it.

“Didn’t hit bone. Bruce should be able to get it out. Get you a shot of morphine.” She turned to examine Thor. “Bullet in your shoulder went all the way through.” She glanced sidelong at her partner. “You can try to hide it but I can see the arrow,” she muttered with a scowl. The shaft, broken off near the skin, was sticking out of his thigh. “Yours?”

“Yeah, spikes.”

“Tony, you got the info?”

“Yep.” 

“Great.” She rose to her feet. “You all get some rest, I’ll keep watch.”

“What about you?” Steve asked.

“I’m fine. And I won’t sleep either way.” She left, leaving the rest of the Avengers to bleed in peace.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter...Short is better than nothing, right? Also, I need some advice.  
> 1\. This installment of this series is going to need at LEAST 30 more pages to finish it, but it's already 80 pages which is pretty freaking long...should I carry it over to the next book?  
> 2\. What should Natasha face in the next book? So far she's faced Loki and then her past. Keeping in mind that this series is mainly a Natasha-developing Natasha-whump and Clintasha mess, but I always love playing with my other characters and developing them. Any ideas?

The others trickled out of the house around ten the next morning. Sam was sleeping peacefully, and Tony had hooked him up to JARVIS tech so they would be warned if his vitals changed drastically. Natasha was not in the barn, the front yard, the porch or the roof. After some deliberation, Clint led them around the side of the house. They could just see her out in the field, close to the border of the forest.

“What are you doing?” He asked as they approached. She had been sitting on a log, staring absently at the horizon.

“Cleaning.”

“I noticed.” The yard had been curiously clean, no bodies anywhere. “What did you do?”

“There were too many to bury. I burned them and buried the bones.” She nodded to a patch of freshly dug dirt. “I stocked all the weapons and anything useful in the barn.” He took a seat on the log next to her. 

“Tash.”

“Hm?” She glanced at him. He had the strange impression that she was looking right through him.

“This wasn’t your fault.”

“I wonder how many of them wanted to be here.” She picked at her fingernails, which were covered in dried blood. “I wonder how many chose it, and how many were forced to.”

“It doesn’t matter. The end result is the same.”

“I used to be like them. I’m a hypocrite to think I’ve changed that much.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I burned them, Clint.” She pursed her lips. “I burned them alive.”

“You…” realization hit. “This is completely different.”

“You’re right. This time I had to do it, this time they fought.”

“You had to before, too. How were you supposed to resist that, Tasha? They raised you. They hurt you. You had to do what they told you, there wasn’t another option.”

“I could have died.”

“Then someone else would have done it for you. That’s not your fault.” The conversation was getting increasingly hard to follow for the others, who stood silently off to the side. 

“I should have been stronger.” His brow furrowed.

“What’s this about? You’ve killed plenty of people, why is this so--” she handed him her phone. He flicked through a few photographs she had taken. Brands, from Hydra, the KGB. 

“They don’t do that to the ones who join willingly.” 

“How many?” She gestured to the large grave where she had buried the bones. Next to it were regular graves, dozens of them.

“I couldn’t just…”

“I know. But it’s not your fault.”

“I got a second chance, why didn’t they?” She ran her fingers through her hair. “I killed them, I killed them and the only thing they were fighting for was their lives. They had no stake in all this, they weren’t being paid or rewarded. Hydra told them to come here and bring us in and they had to because the alternative…” She shook her head. “I’m like them. I should have done better, I should have saved them. What’s the point of being the good guy, Clint? You saved me. Why can’t I do the same?”

“That was completely different. There was one of you, we weren’t fighting at the time--this is self preservation. Tash, you did them a favor. If you couldn’t save them, the next best thing was killing them. You told me that, remember? You didn’t think you could be saved, you wanted me to kill you. They,” he pointed to the graves. “Are in a better place.”

“I thought I was done with all this. I thought it was over after Budapest. God, we barely got out of that one alive. How are we supposed to do this? We’re playing with fire, Clint. We’re going to get burned.”

“We have, already. God knows how many times. But we’ve always been okay.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I can face them. If they press on the right nerve I’ll just…” She sighed. “This is what they want. They want it to break me. They didn’t have to send…”

“Slaves,” he finished for her.

“Slaves. They only did because they knew what it would do to me.”

“And the best thing you can do is prove them wrong, Tasha. You are so much stronger, and smarter, and kinder than they are. You have the upper hand now.”

“But they have everything. They have seventeen years of my life that...I’ll never get back. They have everything they did to me to break me.”

“You are Natasha Romanoff. You. Don’t. Break,” he said firmly. 

“But to them I’m Natalia Alianovna Romanova, and I did break. Repeatedly, for years and years.”

“That, god, that had nothing to do with you! You were a freaking child, they told you what to do and you HAD to do it because you...you didn’t know better. And when you did, they had you bound to them by pain and fear, you couldn’t control it. You can’t just be good when everyone you’ve ever known has taught you to be bad. When a child feels pain, it’s negative reinforcement. They know not to do that thing ever again, even if they only burn their hand twice to figure it out. You’re like the opposite of a normal childhood. When you weren’t in as much pain you knew you were doing something right. The brain is wired to keep doing that.”

“How can you love me?” She asked quietly. Love was a word she was still unfamiliar with. “After everything I’ve done. After everyone I’ve killed, or hurt. Up is down and right is left, they built me backwards. My brain is so messed up it’s like I’m...It’s like I’m a different species. How, for god’s sakes, Clint, can you love me?”

“I have a weakness for damaged goods,” he said mockingly, earning a faint smile. “Yeah, you’re pretty screwed up. And sometimes in bad ways, like how I never know if you’ll punch me or kiss me when I wake you up. And it makes me so angry that the things the rest of us count as torture seem mundane to you, because I can’t stand imagining how much pain you had to go through to be able to handle so much more than you should. But you’re also brilliant, and beautiful, and strong, and talented. And you’re good, Tasha. Maybe not compared to the rest of humanity, but if you compare me to them I’m pretty bat shit crazy too. You’re good.”

“Not as good as you.”

“But you know what? You shouldn’t be. Everything in life has taught you not to be. Despite everything, you are good. And to me you’re more good than the best person on Earth, because you had to work so fucking hard to get here. You had to break down everything you’d ever known, to build yourself up from scratch. That’s bravery, that’s strength. No one in the world has had to work as hard as you to become as good as you are, okay?” They sat silently for a few seconds.

“What did I tell you about these big dramatic speeches?”

“That you love them,” he grinned, tilting her head and kissing her gently. “Now you’re going to get your ass inside and take a shower. And I’m not even going to ask what injuries are hiding under this,” he motioned to her clothes. “Because I know you don’t want me to.”

“You’re not the boss of me, Barton.”

“No. No one will ever be the boss of you again,” he said earnestly. “That said, that was an order, so you should probably go before I decide that I need to know where you’re hurt and end up carrying you back to the house.” She rolled her eyes at him and rose to her feet.

“Alright. But just so you know, I was planning on showering anyway.” He merely chuckled and watched as she moved off. 

“Okay, seriously, are you guys ever going to explain all this?” Steve asked.

“No,” Clint said, already walking away.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the long waits. My life is in pieces.

Once again, the Avengers were going to battle. They had all cleaned up, thrown on their armor and prepared themselves for what was ahead. Sam simply couldn’t go with them. He was in no shape to fight or even fly a plane, so after a long discussion they had opted to leave him behind. Tony had contacted Pepper and she had plans to swoop by and retrieve him soon after they left. 

Clint and Natasha were in the cockpit flying the plane while the others remained in the back. Bruce had his headphones on and was trying to sleep while Tony tried to teach Thor how to play chess. 

“How are you feeling?” Clint asked cautiously, shooting her a look. Natasha’s mouth twitched in displeasure.

“Fine.”

“Mhm,” he muttered, not convinced.

“No one stays dead any more. Have you noticed that?”

“It’s not always a bad thing. Coulson is alive.”

“True.”

“We’ll get them this time, Tasha. Burn their bodies if we have to.” 

“Yeah.” She took a bite of a protein bar and gazed out at the expanse of clouds before them, pulling her knees against her chest. 

“Something is bothering you.”

“This whole thing is bothering me,” she replied calmly. “You think you can erase something from your ledger but it is never truly gone. Whatever happens, no matter how much good I do, I will always be this person.”

“No you won’t,” he said easily. “You aren’t. You only feel like that because they want you to. They want you to feel small and scared and alone, but you’re not. You’re a badass Avenger with a crew of literal superheroes fighting on your side. You did the right things to get to this point.”

“I don’t like how they look at me.”

“The Avengers?”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean?”

“They look at me differently, since all this started. Since they became involved so deeply in my personal life and my past.”

“They’re not judging you, Natasha.”

“They are,” she countered. “Subconsciously they are adding little notes to the person they think I am, how they trust me. I learned a long time ago that the more people know about me the more they hate me.”

“I know a lot about you and I don’t hate you.”

“Well you’re just insane.” He rolled his eyes at that. 

“None of them hate you.”

“Maybe not…” Natasha sighed, brushing hair from her eyes. “But there’s just a bit more fear there, a bit more hostility. I understand, I just wish they had never joined this part of my life. I was enjoying having...fun.”

“You’re being crazy,” Clint said.

“Am I, though? They feel lied to, they feel betrayed.”

“They’ll get over it. They wouldn’t be risking their lives fighting with you if they didn’t still trust you and respect you and care for you. Anything else is just temporary. Those things haven’t changed.”

“We’ll see.”

“Do you want to talk about what’s going to happen here?” She glanced at her hands.

“No.”

“It might help.”

“Nothing is going to prepare me to fight this fight, here. It’ll only be worse if I spend the flight thinking about it.”

“Alright. Twenty questions?”

“You’re on.”

 

*

 

Although the trip only took a few hours, to Natasha it seemed a lifetime. She spent the journey talking quietly with her partner, but never once did she forget where they were going. Once they got there, it only got worse.

“You ready?” Clint asked. She glanced sidelong at him. He was one of the strongest men she knew, even in a social group full of gods and enhanced beings. Still, she could see the toll this was taking on him. Not only was he in physical pain, but the archer struggled silently to control his own fury over their treatment of her. 

“No,” she replied honestly. He leaned in and kissed her, resting his forehead against hers.

“I know, Nat.” She placed one hand on either side of his face and drew back enough to make eye contact.

“Stay alive, Barton, you hear? I need you alive. I need you. Stay alive for me, please.”

“I’ll do my best.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. She gave his hand a last squeeze and jumped from the plane. She wished that they could have just blown the facility to hell, killing everyone inside. She wished that it could have been that simple, but it wasn’t. They couldn’t destroy decades of cutting edge technology, of information SHIELD had been searching for, of dangerous chemical experiments. They couldn’t destroy it without first searching it. 

Tony caught her at the last possible moment and let her drop the last two feet onto the concrete. Steve, Clint, Thor and Tony landed beside her. Bruce stayed as pilot.

The facility was massive. Building after building after building stretched before them, connected by a series of catwalks that crisscrossed between them. The buildings were tall, high security, with very few entry points and guards on all of them. 

“Wow,” Tony breathed. Steve glanced down at Natasha.

“Are you okay?”

“I wish people would stop asking me that.”

“It’s because we care.”

“Generally, people who ask the question already know the answer.” She whipped out a gun and shot a guard who had emerged onto a neighbouring rooftop.

“So this is it, huh?” He asked. “End of the line?”

“This is it,” she confirmed. 

“Nice view, though,” Clint said softly to her.

“I’m not sure, though, Clint,” the woman said, turning her head slightly. “All I see is red.” They all turned to stare at her. “Come on,” she said, motioning for them to follow. They crept across the rooftop until they reached a door. The two guards dropped quickly, one with a bullet and the other with an arrow. 

“How do I get through this?” Tony murmured to himself, moving closer to the door. Natasha bent down, searching the security guard. After a moment she pulled out a keycard.

“Stark, can you do a retina scan of him?” She asked. He moved over, allowing JARVIS to scan the man’s eyes. As Natasha scanned the card, Stark scanned the man’s eye. The door swung open, and bullets flew. Steve threw up his shield, deflecting the bullets back at the man, who died quickly. They stepped over his body and made their way inside.

“I do not feel at home,” Thor said lowly, swinging his hammer a few times. The tunnel was well lit, with white concrete walls. It led quickly into stairs, which spiralled down. 

“They keep experiments and test subjects on the lowest levels, the sublevels. Hardest to reach, hardest to escape from. There aren’t any windows or doors until the ground floor, but there are a lot of levels beneath that,” Natasha said, moving carefully down the stairs. The place was almost eerily quiet. Though they had not known that the Avengers were coming free, some of their guards must have seen them entering the facility.

“Isn’t it too quiet?” Steve asked.

“Yes.”

“Where is everyone?” Tony asked, a slight nervousness to his voice.

“Gathering forces. Waiting,” Clint said. As he spoke, they heard footsteps.

“Shit, where are those coming from?” Tony asked, glancing first up and then down.

“Both,” The archer replied. The enemy pounced. He killed two of them before a third knocked his bow aside and threw him against the wall. This man was neither a regular human nor a grunt--he knew what he was doing. Fists flew and Clint kicked the man’s legs out from under him, only to be dragged down with him. The spy pulled out a knife, getting so close to his face that Clint felt the wind against his cheek. 

“Fucking archer,” he spat as Clint rolled them over, punching the other man in the face and making a grab for the knife. 

“Shit,” Clint muttered as the man managed to slice his arm. In his peripheral vision, he could see Steve, Tony and Thor fending off those attackers from above. Steve was smashing skulls, Tony was blasting them away and Thor’s hammer swung in an arc. He couldn’t see Natasha. “Nice knife. I think I’ll have it,” he snarled, smashing his elbow into the man’s face, taking the knife and slitting his throat. Clint rose to his feet. He looked up at the guys, who had succeeded in fending off their opponents. They all looked down the stairs, which were littered with bodies. Clint walked over them, having to go down three flights of corpse covered stairs to find Natasha. She looked up at him and the others.

“Are you ready?” She asked.

“Are you okay?” Steve replied. Natasha glanced at the stairs, stained with blood.

“Let’s go.” She turned on her heel and marched on. For a few feet, she left bloody footprints in her wake.

 

* 


	13. Chapter 13

The deeper they moved into the facility, the more people they encountered. Natasha had told them that most things of interest would be on the lower levels, and if they killed everyone on their way down they would be able to survey the other levels on their way back up. In truth, it would take quite some time to fully clear the buildings, but they were hoping that once the main threat was taken care of, Fury would send in scientists to study the place. None of them wished to remain there any longer than they had to.

“This place is…” Tony muttered, glancing around as they moved down the hallway on one of the lower floors, opening each of the doors as they passed.

“Horrible,” Steve finished, glancing inside a room. “What’s that?” He asked, pointing to the large metal machine in the center of the room.

“Ask Bucky,” Natasha muttered. Steve raised an eyebrow.

“That’s the brainwashing--”

“One of them, anyway.” They all ducked inside the doorway as a hailstorm of bullets rained down upon them. Two dozen more opponents had rounded the far corner.

“Why are they trying to kill us if this Pietrovich guy wants to use us?”

“They can cure death here,” Natasha replied, firing blindly into the hall.

“What?”

“Not always. But they’ve got very advanced technology.” Tony stepped into the hall, palms out, and blasted the attackers with beams from his suit. The noise from the guns quickly died down. “Don’t you see how low they were shooting? No headshots.”

“Huh.” They moved back into the hall, on high alert. Tony had, twenty minutes previously, hacked into the base’s security system and set it on a continuous loop to prevent them from locating them that way and sending hundreds of opponents at them at once.

“What’s this?” Tony asked, using a retinal scan and a keycard from one of the newly dead to open another door. Behind it sat another large, gleaming machine and a chair with reinforced restraints.

“You don’t want to know. Just stop asking.”

“But--”

“It’s all bad, okay? You can just assume that whatever it is, its function is to cause pain,” Natasha snapped. 

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“We’re looking for the labs and the people,” she said. “Okay? You know what a lab looks like, you know what people look like. Don’t mind the machines, don’t scan them with JARVIS, I don’t want any record of them after we blow this place up.”

“Natasha, I would never build--”

“You wouldn’t, but if someone else got their hands on these designs? These things are legendary because they’re so far advanced beyond anything else, people have being trying to recreate them for decades. Just leave them be.”

“Okay. Sorry,” Tony said. Natasha had hardly spoken since they had entered the facility, and when she had it had been angry and harsh. They all felt uncomfortable just being inside the facility, so it was hard to imagine what being there again was doing to her.

“Natasha, what if we find test subjects?” Steve asked. Thusfar, those they had encountered had been grunts, spies, and the same poorly modified soldiers that had come after Clint and Natasha in the first place. Needless to say, the Avengers were looking a little the worse for wear, each of them bearing a number of new cuts, scrapes, bruises, and in Steve’s case a bullet to the arm.

“What?” She asked distractedly, peering inside another room as Tony opened the door.

“I mean, the timing of this. Them wanting you, now, so badly. What if they’re not just trying to recreate Bucky. What if they’re trying to recreate you?” She glanced sharply at him. “I just...they made new guys like Bucky, and they’re messed up, so they’re looking for Bucky to try and solve the problem. What if they’re running another trial of...you?”

“I…” she blinked. “That would be incredibly stupid, seeing as everyone in my trial but me went insane.”

“Maybe that’s why they need you so much,” Tony put in. “To see what they did right with you.”

“He’s certainly stupid enough to do it,” she muttered, finding a new keycard while Tony scanned the man’s retina. “I don’t know. I didn’t have to think about him running new human experiments because he was dead, and now…” the door opened and they entered.

“Wow,” Tony breathed. This room was much larger than the others, and it was clearly a laboratory. A very high end laboratory, filled with equipment, vials of different coloured liquids, tablets and computers. Along the far wall were more of the tables with heavy duty restraints, surrounded by equipment. Natasha blinked rapidly and took a step back, pressing herself against the hallway wall.

“Tasha,” Clint said, emerging into the hallway. “Hey,” he said, resting a hand on her shoulder. The others poked their heads outside.

“I...I don’t…” she choked. “It’s…”

“Okay, Tasha, it’s okay. I’m going to go with Tony, I’m going to help him find things. You stay out here with Steve.” He rested his hand on the side of her face and she nodded. He kissed her forehead and moved back into the lab. “Just stay outside with her,” he muttered as he passed Steve, who nodded. After that he led Tony further into the laboratory, moving carefully between the tables.

“Is she okay?” Tony asked, when they were far enough inside that they wouldn’t be heard. Clint handed him a tablet. 

“Hack,” he said simply. While Tony started in on the device, the archer moved forward into the room, running his hand along one of the tables with restraints. “There is nowhere in the world she would hate being in more than this facility. It’s hard enough thinking about it, but being here? In this building?” He shook his head. “And asking her to come in here, with all of the tests and painful experiments and memories,” he tapped a needle resting on a tray. “She can hardly stand to go to the doctor when it’ll save her life, so you can imagine that this is just..”

“I understand, it’s totally...oh my god,” Tony muttered.

“What?”

“I...hacked,” he said, motioning to the tablet. “They have their procedures on here.” He glanced up at Clint. “How the hell did she turn out as sane as she is? She’s the most down to Earth person I know.”

“I don’t know. Now you have to use that, identify all of this. What’s explosive, what needs to be destroyed, permanently, what needs to be preserved. While this,” he motioned around. “Is wrong, some of their stuff could help. Like Natasha will never get cancer. That research could be used.”

“Right, right.” Tony frowned. “If we’re going to call in a whole bunch of SHIELD guys, why are we even bothering to go through all of this? We won’t be blowing up the facility before they get here.” Clint stared at him wordlessly. “There’s something you want to keep a secret?”

“The Super Serum,” Clint said.

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s here. They use it on their test subjects.”

“They...what...wait, why would you want to keep it a secret?” Clint raised an eyebrow. “You want to destroy it?”

“We’ve discussed it extensively with Fury, with the board, on the off chance that we ever found this place. It is too dangerous. Should it fall into the wrong hands...even the hands of our own government, it could be catastrophic. That, and it’s possible that the other girls in Natasha’s trial didn’t go insane because of the genetic engineering, they went insane because of the serum. That Natasha is just a fluke.”

“What about Rogers?”

“He’s only been unfrozen, with the serum, for a few years. It took twenty one in the girls.”

“And Fury doesn’t trust his scientists to dispose of it?”

“It’s the Super Serum, Tony. Can you imagine getting your hands on that? As a scientist? How tempting that would be?”

“Yes.”

“It’s best that we destroy it.”

“And this is what Natasha thinks?”

“Yes.”

“What Fury thinks? What the board thinks?”

“Yes, Tony.” The billionaire stared. 

“Steve,” he called. “Get in here.” The captain poked his head inside the room and entered, glancing around.

“What?”

“Clint is telling me that they use the Super Serum here, on their test subjects, and that Fury and the board and Natasha want us to destroy it.”

“What?” Steve glanced between the two of them, gaping.

“He gives good reasons. Safety, the possibility that it caused this insanity in Natasha’s fellow test subjects. I’m inclined to do it. But,” he added. “I know two people, apparently, who have the serum. Natasha says destroy it. What do you think?”

“Tony, we don’t have time--” Clint muttered, but was silenced with a look. Steve put his hand on his forehead, thinking.

“Fury and the board all said destroy it?” He asked.

“Yes,” Clint said, slightly impatient.

“And Natasha did, too?”

“Yes.”

“Then I trust their judgement.” Tony nodded and moved over to a glass door, fogged over. He opened it, revealing a number of refrigerated test vials filled with blue liquid.

“This is it. We’ll have to check every other lab in every other building, and erase the formula from the system, and from JARVIS,” Tony said. “But if it were me, I would get rid of all of these enemies before we do. We’ve already killed three hundred or so, how many more can there be?”

“Lots,” Clint said grimly. “Can you destroy all of these?” Tony nodded and raised his palm, which glowed, heating the air inside the container until the blue liquid boiled and evaporated. “Good. Let’s go kill some douchebags.” The three of them traipsed back into the hallway where Thor and Natasha were waiting.

“How many more do you think there are?” Tony asked.

“Hundreds. Maybe thousands,” Natasha replied. “By now they know we’re in this building, so they’ve left only the essential personnel behind and are all converging on this location.”

“Which means Banner is out there, taking care of things,” Clint added. “He was going to wait until as many of them as possible were outside, moving in on our location, and then take them out from above. That should take care of a few hundred.”

“Slowly but surely, they’re coming down those stairs. A lot of them. Tony disabling the elevator and blocking off the stairs saved us some time, but not much. We’ve still got five floor to clear before they come down on us. And once we’ve killed them, we have to be able to dig our way out of here,” Natasha was saying, collecting ammo from the fallen soldiers as she did. “Because there will be more. A few dozen more, in every building. And there will be Ivan. And I’m going to find him before he has the chance to flee like the coward he is. He’s not getting away this time. This time, I’m going to kill him for good.” She slung a dead man’s gun over her shoulder.

“We know, Tasha,” Clint said quietly.

“Let’s go,” she said curtly, turning on her heel and leading them down the hallway, towards the next door.

  
*


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second to last chapter! Oh no! Thankfully (for me, anyway) I plan on continuing the series. If anyone has any great ideas for the next installment, don't hesitate to tell me!

They cleared four of the five remaining floors before the hundreds of enemy soldiers converged on their location. They ducked inside a large, open training room, which both had space for fighting and objects to hide behind. Tony’s suit was badly damaged by an electric grenade, which drained its power and capabilities and delivered a bad electric shock to his body. He was forced to switch to guns in order to conserve energy, though he did have the advantage of being bulletproof. Steve was crouching behind his shield, using it to deflect bullets back at the soldiers that streamed through the small doorway. And they just kept coming, firing at the Avengers who stood at the far wall, using the metal climbing structures as protection. Their bodies piled up, filling the large room. Natasha had told them how disposable they were, but Steve and Tony were still shocked at how easily they sacrificed themselves. Thor knew much of battle, and was unsurprised. The God was throwing his hammer, catching skulls, then calling it back. He was vulnerable to the bullets should he emerge from his hiding spot, so he could not move into the crowd as he wished to. Clint and Natasha were both firing rapidly, Clint having run out of arrows. Natasha would occasionally leap out and retrieve weapons for them when they ran out of ammo. The fight lasted for what seemed like aged.

“Jesus,” Tony muttered. They had been staring at the doorway for three minutes, but no one had come through. They all looked around at the bodies that had piled on top of each other.

“Do you think that’s most of them?” Steve asked. He looked sick to his stomach.

“I hope so,” Natasha muttered. She restocked on ammo. “Everyone okay?”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve lost all hearing in my right ear,” Steve muttered. They had been wearing earplugs, but the noise had still been deafening. 

“I believe that I was “grazed” as you humans would put it,” Thor said, gesturing to his forearm. “But I am still battle ready.”

“I’m a little fried, but I’ll live,” Tony said.

“Let’s get out of here,” Natasha said, after looking Clint up and down. He had a few new bruises, but he wasn’t bleeding to death. She led them to the door as quickly as possible. They had to climb over bodies piled two or three high in order to get there, so it was with relief that they stepped into the hall, made their way down to the last floor, and cleared it. On their way back up they killed a few stragglers, leaving the building completely empty. Once they emerged onto the roof, wind whipping at their hair, Natasha glanced around. There were hundreds of bodies strewn across the grass, thanks to Bruce. A few guards on neighbouring rooftops started to fire on them, and Steve raised his shield to protect them while Natasha shot back. They dropped one after another.

“Where to next?” Clint asked.

“Those two,” she pointed at two somewhat smaller buildings. “Are hangar bays. They’ll only have twenty, maybe thirty guards each. I’d probably blow them if we could, so that Ivan can’t escape. I say we go there first,” she pointed at one of the taller buildings that connected to theirs by catwalk. “Then there,” she motioned to the next. “And end there,” she indicated the furthest building.

“Sounds good,” Steve said. He led the way across the catwalk, and Tony launched two of his missiles at the hangar bays, which went exploded. They reached the roof and they entered the first building. As Natasha had said, there were fewer guards here. They had mostly left to enter their building, and had been killed either inside or on the lawn. It was much faster to sweep the building with so few enemies, and in no time they had finished and were on their way to the second. They repeated the same process, sweeping the entire building, taking out those who opposed them, and found themselves at the third building. Natasha stared at the door.

“Nat?” Clint asked.

“He’s in here.” He rested a hand on her shoulder and she sighed, glancing at him.

“Almost over?”

“Almost over,” he echoed, nodding. She kissed his cheek and retrieved a keycard, holding it up while Stark used a retinal scan to open the door. She took a deep breath and stepped inside.

 

Eerily, no one attacked them on the first floor, or the next, or the next. They went down and down into the depths of the building, and encountered no one. 

“This feels wrong,” Natasha said. “There’s something wrong.”

“Where is everyone?” Steve questioned, poking his head into a room that contained what looking like another brainwashing device.

“They wouldn’t just leave an entire building unguarded. There’s stuff here,” she said, gesturing to the lab, the machines that they passed. “This is valuable information, Ivan would never allow it to be unguarded. Never, even if we were all in one building. If there was even a possibility we would get through those defenses…”

“I mean, we’ve seen all of this stuff in the other buildings, right?” Tony asked. “He has to assume that we’ve already seen it, collected designs, so there’s no point in guarding any of this. Not from us, anyway.”

“It’s a point of principle, with Ivan,” Natasha countered, glancing inside yet another empty training room. “This is just unlike him. It’s like he’s given up.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Steve asked quietly. “I mean, we’ve killed most or all of his people, we’ve found his secret facility, we’re obviously coming for him.”

“I don’t…” Natasha froze. She had opened another door, and this room did contain a person. A young woman was lying on the floor, her black hair pooled around her head. As was blood. There was bullet hole through her forehead, red blood spread across the floor. Her skin was pale, eyes still open. Natasha closed her eyes for a second and then stepped inside. She knelt, felt for a pulse, even though she knew there was no use. Natasha lifted her shoulder and rolled the girl onto her side so she could see the tattoo on the back of her neck. 001BW. With a sigh, she lowered the body back down, closed the girl’s eyelids and rose to her feet.

“Nat--”

“001 Black Widow, Clint.” She and Tony opened another door, behind which was another girl, also with a bullet in her head. “This is going to be a very unpleasant building. I’m sorry.” Natasha continued opening doors, and continued finding young women dead, having been shot in the head. There were floors upon floors of them, in their cells. Tony’s suit told them that they had been killed during the time that the Avengers had been at the facility. There were 764 of them in total, the Avengers finding bodies all the way down to the last floor. Natasha closed the cell door of the last of the dead girls, and turned, breathing out and closing her eyes.

“Natasha,” Clint said.

“No,” she said curtly, raising her finger. Her eyes flicked open. “There are 764 dead teenagers and if he had been able to study me, they might be alive. You don’t get to make me feel better about that.”

“You can’t blame yourself.” She just shook her head, motioning to the last door. 

“If he didn’t manage to escape, he’s in here.”

“Do you know what this room is?” Tony asked.

“Training room.”

“Like the one we fought most of them in?”

“Exactly.”

“So he’s got some cover.”

“All the cover in the world isn’t going to save him now,” she said coldly, raising her guns. “Open the door.” Tony did so and they stepped inside. The lights were already on, the room appearing empty. They all had their weapons raised, but didn’t intend to use them. It was clear that Natasha needed to make this kill. “Ivan, it’s over.”

“Maybe, sweetheart.” His voice echoed slightly as it returned to them. “Maybe you’ve won. After all, you are my finest creation. I shouldn’t be surprised that you surpassed me.”

“Get out here, coward.”

“If I’m going down, I’m taking you with me.”

“You want to kill me? Give it your best shot.”

“Oh no. Worse.” He emerged, and she raised the gun, but she had no shot. Ivan was holding a girl in front of him. She didn’t have a shot, none of them did. More important, though, was the girl. She was the same age as the others. They looked about twenty, but Natasha told the Avengers that the girls were around seventeen--they did speed the aging at that age. The girl had flaming red hair and green eyes, and was a near duplicate of how Natasha had looked twelve years ago. “I’m sure you remember your daughter.” Natasha took a deep, shaking breath.

“My daughter died, Ivan, you killed her.”

“Yes, well, I brought her back. The point was proven when you thought she was dead, she didn’t need to stay dead, you just had to continue thinking she was dead.”

“Let her go.”

“Oh no.” He pulled out a gun and held it to the girl’s head. “See, I can bring someone back from a gunshot wound to the chest, or poisoning, but not a headshot. This you know.”

“Ivan, don’t.”

“Then let me go.”

“I can’t,” she said, gritting her teeth. “You’re too dangerous.” He pressed the gun harder against her head. “Ivan, please!” He chuckled.

“Are you begging?”

“Yes! Please, please, Ivan, please. You don’t have to do this, okay? Let her live. Let her live, please.” She was taking slow, silent steps forward, relying on Ivanka blocking his view.

“Now, now, Natalia. You’re going to kill me, and there’s nothing I can do to stop you. The only thing I can do to hurt you, to really hurt you, is this.” He flipped the safety and fired. The body of Natasha’s daughter fell from his arms, revealing a tall dark haired man in his fifties, dressed in a suit. He grinned, seeing Natasha’s expression. “Oh darlin’, now I can die happy.” Natasha stared at him. She was shaking, but as his hand with the gun moved, she reacted instantly. She fired, shooting the weapon from his grasp. The next bullet caught his left shoulder, another his right, then a well placed bullet to his left leg snapped the bone and he fell, crying out in pain. She stalked towards him, shooting his other leg as he groaned. When she shot him between the legs he let out a high pitched scream of agony. 

“Go straight to hell” she hissed, slamming a boot on his chest and firing a bullet into his skull. She watched the light fade from his eyes and turned to Ivanka’s body. She knelt beside her, not caring that she was kneeling in a pool of blood. Natasha closed the girl’s eyes and kissed her forehead, as he had shot her through the side of the head. She murmured something quietly in Russian, then, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry.”

 

After what felt like hours, Clint approached and knelt beside her, resting his hand on her shoulder. She leaned her head against his hand.

“I’ve called in Fury’s guys.” Natasha was stroking her hand over Ivanka’s hair.

“I can’t leave her.”

“Of course we won’t leave her.”

“We can’t leave them, Clint.” She looked up at him. “Not here, not like this.”

“I know. Maria’s bringing in a helicarrier. I don’t think we should have them buried here.”

“What’s the freest place you can imagine being buried?”

“Hm...by the ocean, in the forest. For me, somewhere tall.”

“There’s a lot of cleared land out by the forest at that SHIELD building. They bury agents there somethings, Fury might let--”

“Of course he will.” He rubbed his hand over her shoulder, comfortingly. “Do you want to bury Ivanka separately?” Natasha sniffed, shaking her head.

“Look,” she said, opening her hand. On her palm was a necklace chain with a diamond engagement ring around it. “She was wearing this. I have no idea how she snuck it through the system, but…” she tilted her head. “There was another girl, 008, she also had a ring on a necklace. I think they were a couple.” She smiled slightly. “Engaged.” She looked up at him. “I don’t want to bury them separately. And we have to access the database and find out what each of their given names are. No numbers on headstones, okay?”

“Okay, Natasha.”

“You know...I saw her, and I actually let myself think, for a second, that she would be okay. I knew…” she shook her head. “I knew he would kill her. And she was dead, you know? I thought she was dead.” He nodded. “So why…” she cleared her throat. “Why does it hurt as much as it did the first time?” He pulled her into a hug.

“We have to hope, Natasha. Hope hurts, but we can’t live without it. You hoped, you lost, and it hurts. And it’s going to hurt. And you have to let it, but it’s going to be okay.” He held her at arm’s length, his hands on either side of her face. “It will be okay.”

“I love you,” she murmured.

“I love you too.”

 

*

 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter! Better really, really late than never, right? I am throwing ideas around and will be writing another installment in this series.

The process of digging 765 graves took a surprisingly short amount of time. For an entire day Fury put his people to work digging graves out by the forest, rather than sitting behind desks or training or going on missions. He insisted that Natasha, Clint, Tony, Steve, Bruce, Thor and Sam not participate. They were all recovering from their injuries, which had been easier to ignore in the heat of the battle. Sam was recovering well, though Steve made him sit in his wheelchair rather than walk as he wanted to. They had all, with the exception of Natasha, been seen by top class SHIELD doctors who had patched them up, medicated them and sent them on their way with ease.  
By the end of the second day, the graves were ready. Headstones had been made, each simply stating the girl’s name, which had been collected from the database. The morning of the next day, 765 coffins were lowered into the ground and a funeral was held. A large number of SHIELD officers showed up for the burial, but Natasha was not surprised. They always gathered to support fallen comrades, even ones they barely knew, and seven hundred teenagers being buried did not go unnoticed. Still, they had the respect to leave soon after the dirt had covered the graves. Natasha, Clint, Steve, Sam, Tony, Pepper, Thor, Bruce, Maria and Fury were left outside, a slight breeze tugging at their hair and clothes. Natasha had made sure that Ivanka and her fiance, Sasha, were buried side by side. Each of them had been buried with their rings. Natasha had been standing alone for a few minutes when Clint came up behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist. She glanced up at him, then returned to staring at the graves.  
“I kind of thought, when they sterilized me, that I’d never have to do this again.” He pulled her closer, kissing the top of her head.  
“I know.”  
“At least I have you. I’ll die before you, so I won’t have to watch you die.”  
“I still advocate for the dying together thing. Fiery explosion, hailstorm of bullets, whichever.” That got a small smile out of her, if only for a second.  
“I’m serious. If you make me watch you die, I’ll kill you.”  
“Okay.” They lapsed into silence.  
“Is it horrible that I wish she had died the first time he killed her?” She glanced at him. “She’s been alive all this time. Everything they did to me, they did to her.”  
“It’s not horrible. It’s love, it’s sanity. C’mon, Natasha, no one would chose that existence over death. No one.” She nodded gratefully. “How are you doing, Nat?” He asked, tucking a few strands of hair behind her ear.  
“I’m fine.” He gave her a look and she sighed. “I want to scream, and cry, and smash things, and kill someone. But I won’t.”  
“You can, you know. You’re allowed to feel pain, and anger, and fear, and sadness. You’re allowed to feel.”   
“I can’t. If I let myself go, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to bring myself back. I have to keep it together.”  
“Natasha, the only person in the world that expects you to keep it together right now is you. You’re allowed to feel, you should, because when you bottle it up…” he stroked his fingers over her shoulder. “When you bottle it up it hurts you.”   
Natasha was silent for a long time, staring out over the sea of headstones and freshly dug dirt. Clint stood beside her, his arm wrapped protectively around her, while the others stayed at a respectful distance and quietly relayed the events of the past few days to Fury and Maria. Finally, she tore her gaze away from the graveyard and looked up at him.  
“So, what now?” He asked.  
“This, everything…” she sighed. “It’s just a reminder, of what I still have to answer for.” She looked past him, to where the others stood close together, murmuring. “I thought that being an Avenger was something I could choose, but it’s not.”  
“Of course it is, Nat,” Clint said, confused.  
“We did this,” she said, nodding to the graves. “Not the killing them part, but we brought them peace. There may not be a Heaven, but six feet under is still a better place than where they were, and…” she cleared her throat. “I don’t know how we found ourselves amongst gods and superheroes, I just know that it’s where I have to be. I want to die knowing that I’ve done more good than bad, and this,” she looked back at the team, then into his eyes. “This is how I get there, as an Avenger. And with you.” She rested her hand on the side of his face and kissed him gently, deeply. She pulled back an inch, still close enough for Clint to feel her breath. “You are my salvation, Clint Barton,” she whispered, her gaze flicking up to meet his crystal blue one. “My past is drenched in red. When I’m with you, all I see is blue.” He could feel that hint of a smile that drove him mad, when she kissed him again.  
"Natasha Romanoff, are you opening up to the possibility of trusting the superheroes, making real friends?" He asked, teasingly.  
"I'm saying you were right about them. You're my future, Barton. You and the superheroes."  
"Well, that seems a little redundant, don't you think?"   
"You're an idiot," she muttered, and together, they turned and walked back to join the team.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE END.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Stay tuned, I will be writing another installment in this Avengers series.


End file.
